Here are some terms and definitions of them to help you understand rendering more. As well as to help diagnose your renders better. Either for VFX, or your other animated scenes.

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Aliasing: Glitches, or artifacts appearing in the render. Most of the time due to poor resolution.

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Alpha Channel: Stores transparency information.

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Acquisition format: Describes the film format that has captured your desired images.

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AIFF: Audio Interchange File Format. A file that stores Audio.

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Ambient Occlusion: A shading method that uses Global illumination to self-shade objects.

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Analog: Information that exists as variables. Unlike digital, which exists as a constant flow of information.

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Anamorphic: A distorted image. You can undistort it at will.

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Artifact: Something undesirable in the rendered image.

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Aspect Ratio: A number that is the result of dividing an image's height by it's width.

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Anti-Aliasing: A setting that removes Aliasing.

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Aperture: In a camera lens. This controls the amount of light that passes through.

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Background: The furthermost distant element, that other elements are placed over. 

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Banding: an artifact that appears in low color resolution. This will appear as rough bands on the image.

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Backing Color: The color that is used for the background of shooting a scene/element/object/etc.

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Barrel Distortion: Lines that are distorted in a way that they will bend away from the center of the image.

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Beauty Pass: A render that contains the detail, the color, and shape of an object or scene.

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Bit Depth: A term that describes the color resolution in bits, or the tiny parts that compose each of the many pixels of the image.

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