Applies to SMIL 1.0
This technique relates to:
There is no universal standard format for representing captions in SMIL 1.0. Different user agents support different caption formats. A file in a supported format must be provided as the textstream src argument for the caption textstream.
QuickTime supports QTText caption files. Real-based players, such as RealPlayer and GRiNS, support RealText caption files. WindowsMedia supports SAMI files, but does not support SMIL. Flash does not support a specific file type, but can parse XML-based caption file; actually the FLVPlayback component support for SMIL is intended to detect parameters like movie/server url or multi-bandwidth indications specified in a <switch> tag.
The objective of this technique is to provide a way for people who are deaf or otherwise have trouble hearing the dialogue in audio visual material to be able to view the material. With this technique all of the dialogue and important sounds are available in a text stream that is displayed in a caption area.
With SMIL 1.0, separate regions can be defined for the video and the captions. The captions and video playback are synchronized, with the caption text displayed in one region of the screen, while the corresponding video is displayed in another region.
Example Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<smil xmlns:qt="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/smilextensions"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil" qt:time-slider="true">
<head>
<layout>
<root-layout width="320" height="300" background-color="black"/>
<region top="0" width="320" height="240" left="0" background-color="black"
id="videoregion"/>
<region top="240" width="320" height="60" left="0" background-color="black"
id="textregion"/>
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<par>
<video dur="0:01:20.00" region="videoregion" src="salesdemo.mov"
alt="Sales Demo"/>
<textstream dur="0:01:20.00" region="textregion" src="salesdemo_cc.txt"
alt="Sales Demo Captions"/>
</par>
</body>
</smil> Example Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil">
<head>
<layout>
<root-layout background-color="black" height="310" width="330"/>
<region id="video" background-color="black" top="5" left="5"
height="240" width="320"/>
<region id="captions" background-color="black" top="250"
height="60" left="5" width="320"/>
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<par>
<video src="salesdemo.mpg" region="video" title="Sales Demo"
alt="Sales Demo"/>
<textstream src="salesdemo_cc.rt" region="captions"
system-captions="on" title="captions"
alt="Sales Demo Captions"/>
</par>
</body>
</smil> The example shows a <par> segment
containing a <video> and a
<code><![CDATA[<textstream> tag. The system-captions attribute indicates that the
textstream should be displayed when the user's player setting for
captions indicates the preference for captions to be displayed. The
<layout> section defines the regions
used for the video and the captions.
Example Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil">
<head>
<layout>
<root-layout background-color="black" height="310" width="330"/>
<region id="video" background-color="black" top="5" left="5"
height="240" width="320"/>
<region id="captions" background-color="black" top="250"
height="60" left="5" width="320"/>
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<par>
<video src="salesdemo.mpg" region="video" title="Sales Demo"
alt="Sales Demo"/>
<text src="data:,This%20is%20inline%20text." region="captions" begin="0s"
dur="3" alt="Sales Demo Captions">
<param name="charset" value="iso-8859-1"/>
<param name="fontFace" value="System"/>
<param name="fontColor" value="yellow"/>
<param name="backgroundColor" value="blue"/>
</text>
</par>
</body>
</smil>
This example shows a <text> element that
includes synchronized text streams within the SMIL file.
Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.
Enabled caption preference in player, if present
Play file with captions
Check whether captions are displayed
#3 is true
If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.