Definition for vertical/horizontal blanking and vertical/horizontal timing

Definition for vertical/horizontal blanking and vertical/horizontal timing

[Sebastian Fricke]

Hello,

I wanted to ask if you might be able to help me formulate a proper definition of the terms vertical/horizontal blanking and vertical/horizontal timing in the context of camera sensors. I have been searching quite a bit on the web and within the kernel documentation + kernel code. But I am not totally satisfied with the results, currently, I have this:
"Vertical blanking is the idle period after reading a frame and horizontal blanking is the idle period after reading a row, the terms stem from the past when a certain interval was required for the electron gun of a cathode ray tube to move back to the top of the screen or the start of the next line. Vertical timing is the total height of a camera's photosensor array and vertical blanking is the difference between the veritcal timing and the actively used height. The vertical blanking interval is used for reading buffers or for the ISP to process frames."

Sources: Documentation/userspace-api/media/v4l/func-read.rst, drivers/gpu/drm/drm_vblank.c, https://www.techopedia.com/definition/13467/vertical-blanking-interval-vbi

I maintain a small set of memory cards(https://www.memcode.com/courses/3184), where I work myself one concept at a time through the media subsystem and so I would like to get this information correct. :)
The current questions I have are:
- I found a lot of information in the context of GPU DRM do these
   information apply to camera sensors as well?
- Are there more things that happen within the vertical blanking
   interval than reading buffers and processing frames with the ISP?

Thank you in advance,
Sebastian