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Technique SM1:Adding extended audio description in SMIL 1.0

About this Technique

This technique relates to:

This technique applies whenever SMIL 1.0 player is available.

Description

The purpose of this technique is to allow there to be more audio description than will fit into the gaps in the dialogue of the audio-visual material.

With SMIL 1.0 there is no easy way to do this but it can be done by breaking the audio and video files up into a series of files that are played sequentially. Additional audio description is then played while the audio-visual program is frozen. The last frame of the video file is frozen so that it remains on screen while the audio file plays out.

The effect is that the video appears to play through from end to end but freezes in places while a longer audio description is provided. It then continues automatically when the audio description is complete.

To turn the extended audio description on and off one could use script to switch back and forth between two SMIL scripts, one with and one without the extended audio description lines. Or script could be used to add or remove the extended audio description lines from the SMIL file so that the film clips would just play sequentially.

If scripting is not available then two versions of the video could be provided, one with and one without extended audio descriptions.

Examples

Example 1: SMIL 1.0 Video with audio descriptions that pause the main media in 4 locations to allow extended audio description

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<smil xmlns:qt="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/smilextensions" 
 xmlns="https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil" qt:time-slider="true">
  <head>
    <layout>
      <root-layout background-color="black" height="266" width="320"/>
      <region id="videoregion" background-color="black" top="26" left="0" 
       height="144" width="320"/>
    </layout>
  </head>
  <body>
    <par>
      <seq>
        <par>
          <video src="video.rm" region="videoregion" clip-begin="0s" clip-end="5.4" 
           dur="8.7" fill="freeze" alt="videoalt"/>   
           <audio src="no1.wav" begin="5.4" alt="audio alt"/>
        </par>
        <par>
          <video src="video.rm" region="videoregion" clip-begin="5.4" clip-end="24.1" 
           dur="20.3" fill="freeze" alt="videoalt"/>
          <audio src="no2.wav" begin="18.7" alt="audio alt"/>
        </par>
        <par>
          <video src="video.rm" region="videoregion" clip-begin="24.1" clip-end="29.6" 
           dur="7.7" fill="freeze" alt="videoalt"/>
          <audio src="no3.wav" begin="5.5" alt="audio alt"/>
        </par>
        <par>
          <video src="video.rm" region="videoregion" clip-begin="29.6" clip-end="34.5" 
           dur="5.7" fill="freeze" alt="videoalt"/>
          <audio src="no4.wav" begin="4.9" alt="audio alt"/>
        </par>
        <par>
          <video src="video.rm" region="videoregion" clip-begin="77.4" alt="video alt"/>
        </par>
      </seq>
    </par>
  </body>
</smil>

The markup above is broken into five par segments. In each, there is a video and an audio tag (the last par has no <audio> tag intentionally). The convention with extended audio descriptions is that the main media pauses during the description. The way to make this happen in SMIL 1.0 is to set a clip-begin and clip-end which dictate the start and end of the video clip, and to set a duration for the clip that is longer than what is defined by the clip-begin and clip-end. The fill="freeze" holds the last frame of the video during the extended description. The audio tag has a begin attribute with a value that is equal to the clip-end value of the preceding video tag.

To determine the values for clip-begin, clip-end, and dur, find the start and end time of the portion of the video being described, and find out the total length of the extended audio description. The clip-begin and clip-end define their own values, but the dur value is the sum of the length of the extended description and the clip defined by the clip-begin and clip-end. In the first par, the video clip starts at 0 seconds, ends at 5.4 seconds, and the description length is 3.3 seconds, so the dur value is 5.4s + 3.3s = 8.7s.

Related Resources

No endorsement implied.

Tests

Procedure

  1. Play file with extended audio descriptions
  2. Play file with audio description
  3. Check whether video freezes in places and plays extended audio description

Expected Results

  • #3 is true
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