media type (as in presentation mode)

Dear list members,

I'm new to this list, so let me first introduce myself shortly. My name 
is Maarten Brouwers and I'm a student Human-Technology Interaction at 
the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) in the Netherlands, which 
is also where I live. Though I'm both interested in both theory and 
practical matters surrounding the web, here's a pretty practical one.

Currently I'm working on a SMIL/RDF file. The file has once been 
designed for an custom build player, but with an eye on the future 
(hence the choice for SMIL). That time that once was referred to as the 
future however, is now. And it turns out (...), our view back then was 
rather short sighted.

The SMIL file was mostly used to describe metadata of video files, 
following the DublinCore example quoted in the recommendation [1]. 
However the situation of today is different in this respect: there will 
be both an offline player and a online player. References therefore need 
to be made both to an offline (screen) version as an online version 
(presentation), and preferably even an 'master' version (the original 
video). The rdf:about way of linking to an ID as suggested in the 
example is therefore no longer possible, since the ID is a dependent on 
the video reference. First idea therefore was to move the ID declaration 
several levels up (e.g. attach it to a <par> element and make the 
<ref>'s containing video's for the different presentation modes as 
childs of this <par> (or is it better to use <excl> or <switch> element 
in this case)). However how can I (correctly) specify a media type for 
presentation? Here I am referring not to media types such as one is able 
to declare in e.g. MIME format, but to media types for presentation. 
Such declaration is for example possible in CSS [2] and in HTML [3] 
(using the media attribute). Is such specification also possible in SMIL 
in a standardized way? I have not been able to use

The best solution I have come up with is the paramGroup:

<smil ... >
  <head>
    <metadata id="meta-rdf">
      <rdf:RDF
       xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
       xmlns:rdfs = "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
       xmlns:dc = "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
       xmlns:smilmetadata = "http://www.example.org/AudioVideo/.../smil-ns#" >
 ... 
    <rdf:Description rdf:about="#scene1"
        dc:Title="RDF intro"
        dc:Description="Introduction to RDF functionalities"
        dc:Language="en"

    ...
    <paramGroup id="screen">
       <param name="media" value="screen" valuetype="data"/>
    </paramGroup>
    <paramGroup id="presentation">
       <param name="media" value="screen" valuetype="data"/>

    </paramGroup>
    <paramGroup id="presentation">
       <param name="media" value="screen" valuetype="data"/>
    </paramGroup>
    ...
  </head>
  <body>
    <par id="scene1">
       <ref src="c:\video\johntalking.mov" paramGroup="presentation">
          <area begin="" />
       </ref>
       <ref src="http://www.example.com/video/johntalking.rm" paramGroup="screen"/>
    </par>
        ...
  </body>
</smil>

I am wondering if anyone of you has some more clever insights on this 
matter than I have, since I'm not that experienced with describing video's.

Thank you very much in forward for your insights.

Yours,


Maarten Brouwers

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/REC-SMIL2-20051213/metadata.html#smilMetadataNS-example
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/media.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/styles.html#adef-media

Received on Tuesday, 31 January 2006 04:09:13 UTC