System, Method and Engine for Playing Smil Based Multimedia Contents

• US 20080250130A1
• Filed: 04/25/2006
• Published: 10/09/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/27/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Li, Jian, Zhou, Yu Chen, Zhang, Rong Sheng
• Granted Patent: US 8,019,894 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/765 intermediate

Abstract

A system for playing SMIL based multimedia contents, comprising: a plurality of SMIL engines for analyzing and interpreting SMIL documents, as well as communicating with and controlling SMIL sub engines, remote media proxies, or local media playing devices; a plurality of remote media proxies for receiving instructions from the upper level SMIL engines, starting or stopping providing media objects to the remote media playing devices, sending back events, and providing basic user interaction capabilities, wherein said a plurality of SMIL engines, a plurality of remote media proxies, and local and remote media playing devices construct a tree-link structure, of which the root node is a SMIL engine, the branch nodes are SMIL engines and remote media proxies, and the leaf nodes are local and remote media playing devices. The corresponding SMIL engines and methods are also provided. The present invention enables the playing of SMIL based multimedia contents on a set of PvC devices, which can be dynamically configured as a new multimedia terminal on demand.

Claims

1. A SMIL engine for playing SMIL based multimedia contents, comprising:

a media device registry for registering media devices controlled by said SMIL engine;

a SMIL parser for, based on the analysis of a SMIL document and the acquired information on the media interaction capabilities of the media devices, generating intermediate SMIL models, distributing the intermediate SMIL models to next level SMIL engines and/or remote media proxies and generating corresponding local proxy objects, and generating internal SMIL models to be deployed on a local SMIL interpreter;

a SMIL interpreter for interpreting and executing the playing logic of the SMIL document, triggering next level SMIL engines and/or remote media proxies and/or local media playing devices to play the media contents, and controlling interaction with a user; and

a remote event proxy for maintaining a mapping table that contains the relationships between said local proxy objects and the intermediate SMIL models distributed to the next level SMIL engines and/or remote media proxies, and being responsible for event transferring between the local SMIL engines and the next level SMIL engines and/or the remote media proxies.

2. The SMIL engine according to claim 1, wherein the media devices controlled by said SMIL engine comprises:

next level SMIL engines, remote media proxies and local media playing devices, all of which support a subset of SMIL defined media interaction capabilities and register respective media interaction capabilities and location information in said media device registry when system starts up.

3. The SMIL engine according to claim 1, wherein said intermediate SMIL model comprises a time container that contains multimedia contents distributed to a next level SMIL engine and a media object distributed to a remote media proxy;

and said internal SMIL model is a time container executable on a local SMIL interpreter, comprising the control logic of the present level SMIL model and the media object distributed to a local media playing device.

4. The SMIL engine according to claim 1, wherein said local media playing device comprises:

a media playing controller for driving a media player according to the triggering mechanism of said SMIL interpreter, and acquiring media contents to be played; and

a media player for playing media contents.

5. The SMIL engine according to claim 1, wherein said events comprise:

timing events, document object model events, user interaction events, and internal events.

6. The SMIL engine according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein said local media playing devices may be pervasive computing devices.

7. A system for playing SMIL based multimedia contents, comprising:

a plurality of SMIL engines according to any one of claims 1 to 6, for analyzing and interpreting SMIL documents, as well as communicating with and controlling next level SMIL engines, remote media proxies, or local media playing devices;

a plurality of remote media proxies for receiving instructions from the upper level SMIL engines, starting or stopping providing media objects to the remote media playing devices, sending back events, and providing basic user interaction capabilities, wherein

said a plurality of SMIL engines, a plurality of remote media proxies, and local and remote media playing devices construct a tree-link structure, of which the root node is a SMIL engine, the branch nodes are SMIL engines and remote media proxies, and the leaf nodes are local media playing devices and remote media playing devices.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein said remote media proxy determines which media objects to be provided according to the capabilities of the remote media playing devices:

if a remote media playing device cannot access any media server, the provided media object contains media contents to be played; and

if the remote playing device can access a media server, the provided media object contains the address of the media server for acquiring media contents.

9. The system according to claims 7 or 8, wherein said local media playing devices and remote media playing devices may be pervasive computing devices.

10. A method for playing SMIL based multimedia contents in a system defined in any one of claims 7 to 9, comprising following steps:

analyzing, with a SMIL engine, a SMIL document and acquiring information on the media interaction capabilities of the media devices controlled by said SMIL engine;

based on the acquired information on the media interaction capabilities, with said SMIL engine, generating intermediate SMIL models, distributing the intermediate SMIL models to next level SMIL engines and/or remote media proxies and generating corresponding local proxy objects; and

/or generating internal SMIL models to be deployed on a local SMIL interpreter;

updating a mapping table, which records the relationships between said local proxy objects and the intermediate SMIL models distributed to the next level SMIL engine and the remote media proxies;

proceeding with above-mentioned steps recursively till the last level SMIL engines with the next level SMIL engines;

interpreting respectively the received intermediate SMIL models and generating internal SMIL models with each said SMIL engine; and

starting up the remote media playing devices and/or local media playing devices to play media contents according to time and events.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein the media devices controlled by said SMIL engine comprises:

next level SMIL engines, remote media proxies, and local media playing devices, all of which support a subset of SMIL defined media interaction capabilities.

12. The method according to claim 10, wherein said intermediate SMIL model comprises a time container that contains multimedia contents distributed to a next level SMIL engine, and a media object distributed to a remote media proxy;

said internal SMIL model is a time container executable locally, comprising the control logic of the present level SMIL model and the media object distributed to a local media playing device.

13. The method according to claim 10, wherein said events comprise:

timing events, document object model events, user interaction events, and internal events.

14. The method according to claim 10, wherein said step for starting up local media playing devices to play media contents comprises:

the local media playing devices acquire media contents from corresponding media servers based on the definitions of the received media objects and play the media contents.

15. The method according to claim 10, wherein said step for starting up remote media playing devices to play media contents comprises:

the remote media proxies determine whether it is needed to acquire media contents to be played according to the capabilities of the controlled remote media playing devices;

if so, the media contents to be played are acquired by the remote media proxies and provided to the remote media playing devices for playing;

if not, corresponding media links or descriptors are provided to the remote media playing devices, which acquire and play media contents to be played.

16. The method according to any one of claims 10 to 15, wherein said local media playing devices and remote media playing devices may be pervasive computing devices.