RE: Grouping Media Items

I don't think I can answer the questions conclusively but can offer some
pointers.

As far as I remember, when using Real Player as the SMIL client, I found
that transitions didn't really operate on collections of media (e.g on
the <par> tag) but only on the instances of the media themselves.
Therefore one potential solution is to give transIn and transOut values
to all the media objects - though that would be tedious.

One other way round it (if you are using Real Player) is to use its
extension rn:background-opacity [I think its called - check the
documentation].  Instead of transitioning the media, you could simply
put a white region over the top of everything and then animate the
rn:background-opacity from 100% to 0% for a fade-in and the opposite for
a fade-out.  I don't know how you would do the other transitions though.

All this is off the top of my head and so might not work.

Steve Bennett

-----Original Message-----
From: www-smil-request@w3.org [mailto:www-smil-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Colin Law
Sent: 28 April 2003 11:14
To: www-smil@w3.org
Subject: Grouping Media Items


hello,

I am writing an application that will essentially display a slideshow
with audio (a grossly simplified description). I had intended to use
SMIL as the data format.

The presentation will consist of many animation items, roughly (see
below) in sequence, all played out in parallel to an audio track.
Associated with each image, or animation there may be multiple text
objects. My question is, how to arrange this within a SMIL document?

Many of the animations will require transitions between each of them. As
I understand it from the specifications, this requires the animations be
placed within a <par> block, and the timing data given to arrange the
overlapping effects. Using the <seq> element in this case for
transitions with fill=transition would 'freeze' the last frame of the
animation then perform the transition, which is not the desired effect.
Is using the <par> element the correct way to be looking at this?

Also, is there a way to group related items? For instance, the animation
and the associated text objects are related, however there is nothing to
relate these items specifically when all items (and there many be many)
are placed within the <par> elements as above.

Any help or guidance?

~Colin.

Received on Monday, 28 April 2003 11:00:58 UTC