Multimedia Applications based on SMIL
Dr. Philipp Hoschka
W3C/INRIA/MIT
March 2001, Hanover
What is W3C ?
- Founded+Lead by Tim Berners-Lee, Web Inventor
- "Leading the Web to its Full Potential"
- >500 Members
- Standards
- XML, XSLT, ...
- HTML, XHTML
- CSS
- P3P
- ...
- SMIL
What is SMIL ?
- XML-based language to create TV-like presentations
- Describe
- Media objects
- Layout
- Timing
- Interactivity
- Design goals
- Easy to author
- Trade CPU power for bandwidth
- "The HTML of multimedia presentations"
- Demo
SMIL History
- Oct '96: W3C Workshop
- March '97: First WG meeting
- June '98: SMIL 1.0 Recommendation
- Feb '99: 2nd WG started
- Sept '00: Last Call SMIL 2.0
- Jul '01: Recommendation
Synchronized Multimedia WG
- CWI
- Ericsson
- IBM
- Intel
- Macromedia
- Microsoft
- NIST
- Nokia
- Oratrix
- Philips
- Panasonic
- RealNetworks
Scenario: TV News Broadcast

Split into Components

Component Synchronization

SMIL Sequential Composition

<seq>
<audio src="http://www.example.com/joe-audio"/>
<audio src="http://www2.example.com/tim-audio"/>
</seq>
SMIL Parallel Composition

<par>
<video src="../joe-video"/>
<text src="../joe-text"/>
</par>
Layout
<layout>
<region id="foo" top="50" left="50 />
</layout>
...
<video region="foo" src="joe-video" />
...
- SMIL 2.0 allows nested regions
Links/Interactivity
- HTML-like links
<a href="joe-home.html">
<video region="foo" src="joe-video" />
</a>
- HTML-like image+"video maps"
<video region="foo" src="joe-video">
<anchor begin="2s" end="4s" href="joe-home" />
<anchor begin="4s" end="8s" href="station-home" />
</video>
- SMIL 2.0 allows events, e.g. mouseclick etc.
Content Adaptation
- Same for different bandwidth, switch captions on/off etc.
- SMIL 2.0 allows author-defined tests (e.g. "wireless")
Other SMIL 2.0 News
- Transition effects
- Broadcaster" can send events (add insertion etc.)
- Improved Accessibility support (Audio Descriptions)
- Additional support for Mobile, TV
- Integration of SMIL functionality into SVG, XHTML
- Takeup by 3GPP, MPEG (parts)
- ...
Getting Started: SMIL Tools
- Players
- RealPlayer
- Quicktime (4.1 and higher)
- Oratrix
- X-SMIL (Open Source)
- Authoring tools
- RealSlideShow
- RealPresentor
- Oratrix
- ...
- Notepad/emacs
More on SMIL
- http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
- www-smil@w3.org