Inside Macintosh: QuickTime Reference

SMIL Usage

Using the SMIL capability provided in QuickTime 4.1, you can generate a SMIL document that will trigger a sequence to play audio, video, animated GIFs, or any other QuickTime-supported media. This sequence can be used for advertising messages.

An ad can be, for example, an audio clip, a video clip, an animated GIF, a fast-start QuickTime movie, or a streamed movie. Any media type that QuickTime can import is allowable as an ad. A sequence of media content, including ads and either the stored or live stream, is described within a SMIL document.

Playback and performance of media clips are designed to be as smooth as possible. Whenever there is sufficient network bandwidth to handle the requirements of the content used, transitions between different media are seamless. QuickTime delays opening the connection to the media on the server until as late as possible before displaying the media, so that servers can reliably count the hits.

From a server-side application, SMIL documents can be customized for a particular user. You can also define the content of the sequence dynamically. This capability is similar to a playlist, but unlike playlists, you can specify the spatial and temporal characteristics of the sequence.

For example, SMIL may be used in the following context. An end user clicks on a link in a Web browser or in a movie in QuickTime Player and then a server decides what will be the right sequence of media to present. In order to accomplish this, the server may generate a SMIL document via CGI or some other mechanism. The SMIL document may be a sequence of media, such as an advertisement followed by other content.

Inside Macintosh: QuickTime Reference