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Nine methods to extend SMIL for multimedia applications

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Abstract

The SMIL 2.0 multimedia standard has been designed for use on the Web. It supports keyboard and mouse as input devices. Typically, SMIL players can play out text, images, audio, and video. SMIL also has a strong support for declarative synchronization and timing. Being an open standard, SMIL could well be utilized in custom applications, in environments such as info kiosks and multimedia consoles. However, these environments usually require better input and output capabilities not available in SMIL. This paper presents nine methods to extend SMIL for custom multimedia applications. The methods include ways to attach new input sources, output capabilities, and extended internal logic. Also, an implementation of an extensible SMIL player is given. As a conclusion, SMIL can be extended in several ways for custom multimedia applications. These extensions will provide new ideas for the future multimedia languages.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 5400, FI-02015 HUT, Finland

    Kari Pihkala & Petri Vuorimaa

Authors
  1. Kari Pihkala
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  2. Petri Vuorimaa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kari Pihkala.

Additional information

Recently, W3C has published SMIL 2.1, which is an updated version of the SMIL 2.0 specification.

Kari Pihkala graduated from the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, where he received his M.Sc. degree in 1999 and Ph.D. degree in 2004. His research interests include XML, multimedia, and mobile devices.

Petri Vuorimaa is head of the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. He has both M.Sc. (1990) and Dr.Tech. (1995) degrees from Tampere University of Technology, Finland. His current research interests include digital television, mobile multimedia, and XML.

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Pihkala, K., Vuorimaa, P. Nine methods to extend SMIL for multimedia applications. Multimed Tools Appl 28, 51–67 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-006-5120-y

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