Captioning for RealPlayer
Adding Captions to RealPlayer
Article Contents
- Page 1: Creating a RealText File
- Current page: Page 2: Adding Captions to RealPlayer
- Page 3: Getting RealPlayer Content on the Web
Adding Captions to RealPlayer
RealPlayer is the easiest of the media files to add captions to, because there is only one way to do it - with SMIL. SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) is very much like HTML, but is actually a form of XML (Extensible Markup Language). SMIL is used to control the way that multimedia content is displayed on the web. Read about the SMIL standard - external link. SMIL files can be created using a text editor or MAGpie - external link.
SMIL File Example
The SMIL file is just a standard text file and can be created using any text editor. Let's take a look at a standard SMIL file.
<smil>
<body>
<par>
<video src="videofile.rm"/>
<textstream src="captionfile.rt"/>
</par>
</body>
</smil>
The <smil> tag tells RealPlayer that this is a SMIL file. The body tag contains the media elements that should be part of the presentations. <par> stands for parallel and indicates that the elements specified within this tag should all play at the same time. You can also use the <seq> tag, which will play clips in a sequence. The video tag identifies the video file that we will display. The textstream tag identifies the RealText file that contains our captions.
Although the previous code will work, you'll probably want to format your presentation and SMIL file a little more:
<smil>
<head>
<meta name="title" content="Your clip title"/>
<meta name="author" content="Your name"/>
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright date"/>
<layout>
<root-layout background-color="black" height="300" width="320"/>
<region id="videoregion" background-color="black" height="240" width="320"/>
<region id="textregion" background-color="black" top="240" left="0" height="60" width="320"/>
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<par>
<!-- VIDEO -->
<video src="http://yourserver.com/videofile.rm" region="videoregion"/>
<!-- CAPTIONS -->
<textstream src="http://yourserver.com/captionfile.rt" region="textregion"/>
</par>
</body>
</smil>
The previous code identifies two regions, one for the media clip (.rm) and one for the captions (.rt).
You can learn much more about SMIL and RealPlayer at RealPlayer's Production Guide - external link. There is also a great tutorial on Lycos - external link.
MAGpie Users
If you use MAGpie 1.0 to create your captions and SMIL file, be aware that it adds additional information to the textstream tag of your SMIL file that renders the captions unreadable in RealOne Player. Remove all of the attributes except for src and region. Although the other attributes are proper SMIL, your captions will not work in the latest RealPlayer if they are there.
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