[SMIL30 LC comment] Additional attributes

Dear Working Group Members,

I am currently having problems creating what I feel should be an easy  
SMIL. I need control of some basic parameters at the start of a SMIL  
file and some for the linking of files.

Here is what I am trying to do:
I have a series of video lectures that we are trying to reference for  
a course. Ideally we want to show a small piece of the full lecture  
but in context of the full lecture. This way a student can watch the  
snippet and if they are interested, the can either drag the playback  
head to just before the piece for more context or click on one of the  
hyperlinks in the index and jump to that topic.

The problem:
I can get close to the desired behavior by first linking to a SMIL  
file with a video with a beginClip and an endClip. But the problem is  
that I don't have the full clip there so a person can't see the  
context without first clicking a hyperlink to a SMIL file with the  
full version of the video with a complete index, and then clicking on  
a hyperlink.

Here's what I think I need:
The ability to seek to a specific time- either as a Linking attribute  
(6.7 of the spec) or as part of the Media Objects as an initial  
attribute (7.x.x ??). Sort of a bookmark feature (or named anchor in  
HTML). Basically on clicking of a link go to this file and advance to  
a specific time while maintaining the full length of the file (unlike  
clipBegin, clipEnd which clips the file), e.g.

<a href="7.013-S06-VL19-0317-0729.smil" seek/advance/goto/ 
bookmark="30s"> Overview</a>

and/or

<video src="ocw-7.013-24mar2006-220k.rm" region="video" seek/advance/ 
goto/bookmark="3:07" />

*** The key is that it is only activated once. This way a person can  
interact with the full video clip at anytime after the video/media  
object seeks to a particular time.

The extra credit version would be to make a seekBegin and seekEnd  
attribute, which would play set time while displaying the full time  
line.  Also, the seekBegin  and seekEnd would be deactivated if the  
video's current playing time was outside the range specified. The  
problem with this is that I'm not sure what should happen after the  
seekEnd time is reached. I don't believe it is possible to pause a  
content region??If you can think of the appropriate behavior, by all  
means feel free to spec it.

I am welcome to hear any feedback. Who knows- maybe it can already be  
done this way and I don't know what I'm talking about.


Best regards,
Jason Player
____________________________
Jason Player
Web Production Specialist
MIT OpenCourseWare
One Broadway, 8th Floor
Cambridge, MA  02139
P 617-324-6044
F 617-253-2115
jcplayer@mit.edu
http://ocw.mit.edu/