SMIL is a standard for describing multimedia presentations
SMIL is a lot like a QuickTime movie-it can display images, text, audio, and video; it can synchronize media elements in time and space.
SMIL documents, however, are text files. When a SMIL file is opened in the QuickTime Player, special tracks called Movie tracks are created on the fly. This has great potential for automatically generating customized QuickTime movies using scripts. Since anything that can generate text output (CGI, PERL, PHP, AppleScript) can create a SMIL document, you can acheive dynamic content delivery with QuickTime.
1. Start by opening the file "slides.smil" in a text editor. This gives you some sense of the general syntax for SMIL.
2. Now open the same file in the QuickTime Player. Under the Movie menu, check Get Movie Properties and notice how Movie tracks have been created for the media elements described in the SMIL file.
3. This file will also open in the RealOne Player or any application that reads SMIL. Be aware that some differences do exist between Apple's and Real's implementation of SMIL. so text early and often.
4. You can even point to live streams in a SMIL file. If you are connected to the Internet and your network is not blocking the RTSP protocol, try opening the "Ad.htm" example. This uses a short sample movie that serves as a preloader for a live stream to Bloomberg TV. Go ahead and edit the "ad.smil" file in a text editor and substitute the "WGBHRadioLive.mov" for the BloombergTV movie. SMIL files are as easy to edit as HTML.
Enjoy.