Color burst
From sciforums_encyclopedia
A term used in color television. since the color info is in the sidebands of a suppressed carrier signal this carrier must be reinserted at the receiver. the device that does this is the color oscillator and is a crystal controlled free running oscillator that runs at approx. 3.59 megahertz (Mhz). in order to produce accurate color the oscillator must be synchronized with the signal being sent. this is accomplished by sending portion of the burst signal along with the regular TV signal. this signal is located on every horizontal blanking pulse and consists of 8 to 11 cycles. if this burst is missing or isn't decoded there will be drifting color bars in the picture. see VIR.