- From: Warner ten Kate <tenkate@natlab.research.philips.com>
- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 11:23:32 +0100
- To: Neil Ridgway <C.N.H.Ridgeway@ecs.soton.ac.uk>, Larry Goldberg <Larry_Goldberg@wgbh.org>
- Cc: www-multimedia@w3.org
>
> What are the differences between SMIL and the MHEG standard?
SMIL and MHEG-5 both offer the functionality to describe a multimedia
presentation; the most important are ways to specify
- synchronization
- layout
- linking
At this moment MHEG-5 is richer in the functionality it offers.
SMIL and MHEG-5 are both declarative languages. Their main difference
is in their language model. Where SMIL accentuates the structured
approach (elements arranged in a tree). MHEG-5 places its accent on
being object-oriented, using an event-driven paradigm for all
presentational dependicies. This creates flexibility in authoring,
as any event can cause any action(s).
MHEG5-document encoding is in ASN.1/DER, a textual notation is
also supported. SMIL is XML-compliant, the document basically
being a text-file.
> I have an embarrassing question - what is MHEG and what does it stand for?
MHEG-5 is ISO/IEC International Standard 13522 since
November 1996 [1]. DAVIC [2] has specified MHEG-5 as the format
for interactive applications. MHEG-5 is used in the digital-TV
broadcast environment (like DVB [3]).
[1] MHEG-5: Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/ovma/mug/index.html
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/ovma/mug/archives/documents/mheg-reader/rd1206.html
[2] DAVIC: Digital Audio-Visual Council
http://www.davic.org/
http://www.gctech.co.jp/software/davic.shtml
[3] DVB: Digital Video Broadcasting
http://www.dvb.org/
http://www.dvb.org/dvb_slides/dvb_index.htm
Regards,
Warner ten Kate.
--
Philips Research Labs. WY21 ++ New Systems & Applications
Prof. Holstlaan 4 ++ 5656 AA Eindhoven ++ The Netherlands
Phone: +31 4027 44830
Fax: +31 4027 44648 tenkate@natlab.research.philips.com
Received on Wednesday, 10 December 1997 05:31:54 UTC