Contact Europe --
Ned Mitchell, <ned@ala.com>, +33 1 43 22 79 56
Andrew Lloyd, <allo@ala.com>, +44 127 367 5100
Contact Asia --
Yumiko Matsubara, <matsubara@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170
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The World Wide Web Consortium Issues SMIL 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation
Cross-Industry Support for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language,
Bringing TV-Like Content to the Web
Press Release http://www.w3.org/Press/1998/SMIL-REC
Testimonials http://www.w3.org/Press/1998/SMIL-REC-test
for immediate release --
http://www.w3.org/ -- 15 June, 1998 -- Leading the Web to its full
potential, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today released the
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL; pronounced "smile")
specification as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry
agreement on a wide range of features for putting multimedia
presentations on the Web. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a
specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has
been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its adoption by the
industry.
"Synchronized multimedia is becoming increasingly important on the Web.
The SMIL Recommendation will enable much-needed interoperability in
this area," explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and Inventor of the
World Wide Web. SMIL enables authors to bring television-like content to
the Web, avoiding the limitations for traditional television and
lowering the bandwidth requirements for transmitting this type of
content over the Internet. With SMIL, producing audio-visual content is
easy; it does not require learning a programming langauge and can be
done using a simple text editor.
The SMIL 1.0 specification was written and developed by the W3C
Synchronized Multimedia (SYMM) Working Group, a unique mix of experts
from the four divergent industries (CD-ROM, Interactive Television, Web,
and audio/video streaming) interested in bringing synchronized
multimedia to the Web. The W3C SYMM Working Group is comprised of key
industry players including Digital, Lucent/Bell Labs, Netscape, Philips,
RealNetworks and The Productivity Works; as well as research and
government organizations such as CWI (Centre for Mathematics and
Computer Science, the Netherlands) and NIST (National Institute of
Standards and Technology, USA).
Enables TV-Like Content
Television programs such as newscasts or training programs use many
multimedia components. In these programs, the display of image, text and
animation elements needs to be synchronized.
The Web is already a multimedia environment, but lacks a simple way to
express synchronization over time -- for example, "play audio file A in
parallel with video file B" or "show image C after audio file A has
finished playing". SMIL enables this type of information to be easily
expressed, thus allowing TV-like content to be created on the Web.
"SMIL will take the Web to new places," said Dr. Philipp Hoschka, W3C
Multimedia Activity Lead and Chair of the SYMM Working Group. "HTML did
a fine job of allowing static multimedia content on the Web. SMIL
greatly expands the Web's capability to integrate dynamic media types
such as audio, video or animations."
Enhances Web Experiences
Of course, the Web offers far more than just television. For example, a
search engine can be used to find a particular SMIL presentation. As the
Web is inherently interactive, users can use links embedded into a SMIL
presentation to obtain background information on a newscast, or to order
a product described in a commercial. With SMIL, users can switch from
'couch-potato' mode into interactive mode with a simple mouse click.
Improves Bandwidth Efficiency
In a typical television news broadcast, large parts of the screen
contain text, still images and graphical elements, with full-motion
video occupying only a small part of the screen real estate. A key
advantage of SMIL is that it reduces the bandwidth of TV-like content,
eliminating the need to convert low-bandwidth media types such as text
and images into high-bandwidth video. "SMIL avoids having to swamp the
Internet with high-bandwidth video if you want to create interactive
multimedia content," added Berners-Lee.
Eases Authorship
Today, few authors write synchronized multimedia presentations for the
Web because existing approaches require the use of an authoring tool or
to learn programming.
SMIL removes these roadblocks. SMIL documents can be authored using a
simple text editor, following the successful model of HTML. Moreover,
authors can describe a presentation using a few simple XML elements
instead of having to learn a complex scripting language. "SMIL will have
the same effect for synchronized multimedia as HTML had for hypertext,"
predicts Hoschka. "It will bring synchronized multimedia authoring to
the masses."
Features Built-In Accessibility
The advanced multimedia capabilities offered by SMIL provide authors
full creative control without sacrificing accessibility for Web users
who have disabilities. In particular, SMIL introduces textual
description of multimedia components, provides the capability to support
captioning, and supports alternate media types.
"SMIL represents an important breakthrough for accessiblity of
multimedia," said Judy Brewer, Director of W3C's Web Accessibility
Initiative International Program Office. "Its 'universal design' has
benefits such as ensuring that multimedia content can be available in
situations where mobile access, low bandwidth or noisy environments
would otherwise render audio or video displays ineffective."
Aids Internationalization
The increasing need for multimedia content and presentation of documents
in multiple languages is well met with SMIL. SMILs internationalization
features, including the ability to include multiple audio tracks in a
variety of languages, make significant steps towards enabling the proper
display of multilingual multimedia documents.
Integrates into Web Architecture
SMIL is the first language that makes the benefits of the Web
architecture available to the world of synchronized multimedia. It
contains all the components Web users are familiar with, such as URLs,
CSS-based layout, HTML-based hyperlinking and an XML-based syntax. As a
more advanced feature, SMIL is the first W3C Recommendation to recommend
the use of XML namespaces for integrating new components into the SMIL
language, and for adding SMIL components to other XML applications that
need synchronization functionality.
Further information on SMIL can be found at http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo
About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]
The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run
by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the
National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA)
in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the
Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web
for developers and users; reference code implementations to embody and
promote standards; and various prototype and sample applications to
demonstrate use of new technology. To date, more than 260 organizations
are Members of the Consortium.
For more information about the World Wide Web Consortium, see
http://www.w3.org/
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