Synchronized Multimedia Activity Statement

The Synchronized Multimedia Activity designed the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") for choreographing multimedia presentations where audio, video, text and graphics are combined in real time. SMIL is a W3C Recommendation that enables authors to specify and control the precise time a sentence is spoken and make it coincide with the display of a given image.

The Synchronized Multimedia (SYMM) Working Group completed SMIL 1.0, SMIL 2.0 and SMIL 2.1 and is currently working on a new version (SMIL 3.0) which adds the following new features through new modules:

SMIL 3.0 smilText provides a new media type for use in SMIL presentations.
SMIL 3.0 External Timing defines an XML timing language that makes SMIL 3.0 element and attribute timing control available to a wide range of other XML languages. Because of its similarity with external style and positioning descriptions in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language, this functionality has been termed SMIL Timesheets. It can be seen as a temporal counterpart of CSS. Whereas CSS defines the spatial layout of the document and formatting of the elements, SMIL Timesheets specify which elements are active at a certain moment and what their temporal scope is within a document.
SMIL 3.0 State provides a mechanism for the author to create more complex control flow than what SMIL provides through the timing and content control modules, without using a scripting language.
SMIL 3.0 DOM describes the SMIL 3.0 DOM support. SMIL is an XML-based language and conforms to the (XML) DOM Core [DOM1], [DOM2]. A language profile may include DOM support.

The Timed Text Working Group is designing an XML-based format used for the representation of streamed text synchronized with other timed media. Typical applications are real time subtitling of foreign-language movies, captioning for people lacking audio devices or having hearing impairments, karaoke, scrolling news items, and teleprompter applications.

Highlights Since the Previous Advisory Committee Meeting

The SYMM Working Group published the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0) Candidate Recommendation on 15 January 2008. The group is currently editing a testsuite and collecting implementation experience to provide an implementation report allowing to exit Candidate Recommendation.

The Timed Text Working Group requested a charter extension through 30 November 2007. The group published a Candidate Recommendation on 16 November 2006 of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP). The group is currently editing a test suite and an implementation report to allow the document to exit Candidate Recommendation.

Upcoming Activity Highlights

The SYMM Working Group expects to publish a Proposed Recommendation of SMIL 3.0 soon. The Timed Text Working Group expects to exit the Candidate Recommendation phase of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP).

Summary of Activity Structure

Group	Chair	Team Contact	Charter
SYMM Working Group (participants)	Dick Bulterman, Eric Hyche	Thierry Michel	Chartered until 31 December 2008
Timed Text Working Group (participants)	Glenn Adams	Thierry Michel	Chartered until 30 November 2007

This Activity Statement was prepared for the April 2008 W3C Advisory Committee Meeting (Members only) per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.

Thierry Michel, Synchronized Multimedia Activity Lead (W3C)

$Id: Activity.html,v 1.232 2008/04/16 14:25:38 ted Exp $