- PAL
- Analog composite color television standard, with a rate of 25 frames per second, and 50 fields per second. Much of Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world use PAL.
- pan-scan
- DVD-Video display format in which a 16 × 9 video is cropped for display in a 4 × 3 window, using parameters defined by the video author.
- parser filter
- A filter that pulls information from a disk by using the asynchronous file reader filter, or from the Internet by using the URL moniker filter.
- periodic advise
- A regular series of advise calls.
- pixel doubling
- Scaling an image by a factor of two.
- plug-in distributor (PID)
- An object that exposes a control interface and implements it by enumerating the filters in the filter graph, finding which filters expose the same interface, and communicating directly with those filters.
- preroll
- The queuing of data in advance of the desired playback time or position.
- preroll time
- The time prior to the start position at which nonrandom access devices should start rolling.
- presentation time
- The stream time at which the packets of data that a filter receives should be presented downstream or rendered.
- preview section
- The portion of the filter graph from the capture filter's preview pin downstream to and including the video renderer.
- primary surface
- The area in memory containing the image being displayed on the monitor. In Microsoft® DirectX®, the primary surface is represented by the primary DirectDrawSurface object.