RE: SMIL, TIME, or make up my own?

Hi Bryan -

I am not familiar with a content or media cataloging standard, but I am
asking around and will forward results to you.

A lot of video editors log the material on video tapes using some
semi-standard formats.  The SMPTE EDL formats are sometimes used to exchange
this kind of information as well.  Unfortunately this does not have much of
the kind of information you probably want, and may not generalize well to
other media.  Isn't there anything already related to photo CD collections,
or is that all proprietary?

Both HTML+TIME and SMIL address a slightly different problem that you
describe.  They share the same syntax for describing clips within media, and
you would probably do well to align to this. 

My initial inclination would be to hunt further for a standard in this area.
If you have no luck there, it probably makes more sense to define another
XML based syntax for your purposes so that you can include the additional
annotations you will likely want for a content management system.  The idea
is certainly a good one.  

In some ways this is a special case of an electronic program guide, where
the media can be thought of as "scheduled" on the media.  ETV and other
groups are looking at this as well.  You might also want to look at the
XPointer spec for the specific clip references - it needs a little work, but
would make for a more general reference mechanism.

Good luck - Patrick

Patrick Schmitz
Program Manager
Microsoft


-----Original Message-----
From: Bryan E. Chafy [mailto:bchafy@ccs.neu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 1998 1:30 PM
To: www-smil@w3.org
Subject: SMIL, TIME, or make up my own?


I would like to know what the feasability SMIL, TIME, (other ?) 
markup languages are to building a sort of common indexing or
cataloging format for media.

On the cdwrite discussion list, 
all of us agree that some sort of common format for 
indexing data on a disk, tape, net-drive, etc is needed.  
For example, when I create an MP3 CD-ROM or a zip disc with a buch
of images on it (or a combination of these) I want to be able to catalog
the files in some standardized way.   This index/catalog should 
be in a common location with a common name (like INDEX in the root 
directory of the media).

Also as well as coentent labeling,
some sort of cassification and function should be applied to the files on
the
media (for example image, video, audio, streamimage, streamtext).
For large video files data, timed track/index markers and capability
for spanning multiple media volumes are needed as well.

I started to make up something of my own:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bchafy/indexer/indexer.html
but if SMIL, TIME or some other SGML/XML markup language fits the bill, 
perhaps that would be better.?

But what is better?  Is any "w3c approved" language geared toward
media (think of CDI)?  The language needs to be easy to parse as well.
From what I can tell, SMIL looks like the closest to what I am talking
about. 

Bryan

Received on Tuesday, 27 October 1998 19:35:30 UTC