Mailing Lists: Apple Mailing Lists
Image of Mac OS face in stamp
 
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

QT streaming / SMIL quirks

Hi,

I've got dozens of MPEG-4 clips on a streaming server and need to play them in a playlist. Not a live streaming playlist, I could do that with the built-in playlist option of QTSS.

I want people to be able to skip clips so I'm generating SMIL files on the fly. These SMIL files point to random MPEG-4 files on the streaming server. Works pretty cool but I'm having a hard time with SMIL. I'm not a die-hard SMIL programmer, but even some basic things aren't exactly easy with QT.

Problem 1: no easy QT text based solution to create an on-demand playlist.
I have to use SMIL since I haven't found any info on other text based playlist solutions for QT... 'qtnext' in rtsptext files doesn't work for streaming url's. Too bad! Any other options but SMIL? No authoring tool solutions please, I need to be able to automate and generate everything with online scripts.

Problem 2: SMIL sequences don't work for streaming content.
Is it documented that <SEQ> entries in QT Player don't work if the <video src> URL's are on a streaming server? The first video plays fine, but the second doesn't. I think it has something to do with a timeout on the streaming server, no matter what the qt:immediate-instatiation value in my SMIL file is or where I use it or leave it out.

My temporary solution is to generate a SMIL file for every clip, and use qt:next to jump to the next SMIL file when the video is done. This works but sequences should work for streaming content too, since I also want to support RealOne Player with the same SMIL files. I shouldn't depend too much on player specific code, SMIL's a generic standard right? Another problem with qt:next is that if the user sets the player to 2x size, each time the next clips is played, the player resizes to 1x size.

Problem 3: end of overlay causes ugly green video
I place a logo on top of each video in each SMIL file for the 10 few seconds. The logo is transparent (black). When the logo disappears, it causes the video driver(?) to redraw the video, which supposedly forgets the previous keyframe, resulting in ugly green video for a blip or even for a few seconds.

Problem 4: overlay text not drawn completely
For each clip, I generate a text file "artist - song". And overlay this for the first few seconds on the video. Although the width I entered is 300 pixels, the black text bar is no longer than 150 pixels so text is cut off.

Problem 5: timing troubles
I'd love to show the overlay logo and text permanently, (to prevent the ugly green video) but they disappear automagically after 10 seconds, even though I enter no timing stuff at all. Since I can't predict how long a clip lasts, I'd like to set a value of 'media', or 'indefinite' or whatever makes sure that the logo stays there as long as clip(s) play. Unfortunately, I tried all possible values I could find in online SMIL documents but all resulted in the logo and text not being shown at all. Sigh...

Problem 6: when using timing, the >> button doesn't skip to the next clip or SMIL movie, but to the next SMIL time.
Since I want people to be able to skip movies, all they should do is hit the >> button in the QT bar. So if you see the text 'madonna - like a virgin', the video buffering, but you don't like that song, you should be able to skip. But, since the text disappears after 10 seconds (which I can't set to the end of the clip, remember), you skip to ten seconds (and the video pauses) instead of skipping to the next clip!

Problem 7: SMIL different in QT and RealOne.
Even if I use basic SMIL 1.0 code, RealOne player and QT player act differently. As an example, the overlay text in QT Player is white on a black bar, and the opposite in RealOne.

Sorry for the rant :-) I hate to say it but ASX is so much easier. Is SMIL support so terrible? I feel like a test bench. What are alternative options? Maybe some experienced SMIL people could help me out? I've got all kinds of test.smi files and sample playlists if you need to test.

Stef
_______________________________________________
streaming-server-users mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/streaming-server-users
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.


Visit the Apple Store online or at retail locations.
1-800-MY-APPLE

Contact Apple | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.