Re: text equivalents for multimedia

Robert,

	I checked out the recommdned site 
>For SMIL examples, pls see
>http://www.usmint.gov/GoldenDollar/webcast_home.cfm
	
	It was a very interesting site, and gave me a better example of how SMIL
works than just reading the W3C materials. I did notice that on the videos
of the talking heads (making speeches), the caption lagged behind the
audio, becoming increasing slower until it was too slow to read while
listening to the audio. The captioning for the Native American dance seemed
pretty redundent since all it ever said on there was "drums" or "chanting",
etc. The window for the captioning was large enough to read easily, but the
window for the video was too small to be seen effectively. I assume that
some of these problems (video too small) could be corrected, but wonder if
the timing for the caption can be tightened up, or if that is uncorrectable.

	For now, I don't think I want to get into SMIL to make a single web page
for the children singing. The idea of synchronizing words and song is good,
it would allow the children viewing the page to learn to sing the song. But
the captioning should be better timed to the song, and there should be a
way to highlight the word being sung, so that the children can learn the
word by sight as well as sound. 

	SMIL is an interesting technology, but it is still too undeveloped to be
of interest to those who make an occasional web page that needs it. I tried
to get some understanding of SMIL by exploring the W3C pages on it, but
even tackling it fresh in the morning didn't make it any easier to see a
quick and easy solution to inserting SMIL into an HTML page made in Word or
Front Page. Anyone who wants to use SMIL now, needs to engage in a
substantial learning adventure. It's not user friendly enough for use by
those other than web designers. 

	If anyone knows of a simple way to add synchronized captioning to audio,
besides putting the static page of the words in the main page (which is
easy to do) please share. If there is an easy way to learn enough SMIL to
do a single page, let me know.

				Anne





	






Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Monday, 6 March 2000 07:31:05 UTC