SMIL When You Surf That : Structured Multimedia Integration Language

My wife is a tenderfoot in the Web development arena. Imagine how surprised I was when, after just earning her certificate in Web design, she sprung this revelation on me: “HTML is going to be replaced by SMIL.” I thought, “Who do you think you’re talking to, sister?”

I reckon I was most put off because I wasn’t sure I knew exactly what SMIL was.

Structured Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) is to multimedia developers what HTML is to linked-content developers. I remember reading about SMIL a few years back, but I recall thinking that it sounded like a play by Real Networks for more market share. Real Networks, after all, was a big contributor to the SMIL 1.0 specification. Microsoft was involved too, but it jumped out of the saddle before the gates were opened, claiming the SMIL specification was too green.

I think I blew off SMIL when I read that Internet Explorer 5.5 would support HTML-TIME, also a multimedia synchronization language. After researching SMIL more thoroughly, I suddenly felt as dumb as a parakeet with a tracheotomy. It turns out that HTML-TIME is based on SMIL 2.0. The main difference is that HTML-TIME is aimed at presenting multimedia within a browser, whereas SMIL is a stand-alone specification whose players need not understand HTML.

The lines have been drawn. Companies with a browser focus such as Microsoft and Macromedia — support HTML-TIME. Those with a stand-alone-player focus — like RealNetworks, Apple, and Oratrix — support SMIL. For developers, it doesn’t matter which approach wins the day. The synchronization concepts are nearly identical and the syntax will eventually be based on SMIL 2.0.

SMIL has grown substantially from its first incarnation. SMIL 2.0 describes modules for timing, animation, layout, linking, media objects, transitions, and more. The basic media types supported are animation, audio, image, text, text stream, and video. Some tag names from the 1.0 release have been updated or deprecated to make SMIL 2.0 compatible with the document object model.

So why Should anyone give a heap of beans about SMIL? SMIL makes for compelling content. Video presentations on the Web basically stink today. A two-inch video popup, for example, has little visual impact. Animation files, a la Macromedia Flash, on the other hand, can generate impact and motion. Integrate the two techniques within a single presentation and you are getting somewhere.

Both animation and video suffer from some key problems, however. Imagine internationalizing a video. You might have to dub the video in six languages and make it available in three bandwidth-optimized versions. Eighteen files just to support a video clip. If you want to add optional captions for the hearing impaired, you’re up to m36 files.

Read the full story on Find Articles