W3C has got a new standard to make it easier to author interactive multimedia presentations. Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) 3.0 lets video, audio, images, text and hypertext links be combined into interactive presentations, with fine-grain control of layout and timing.

The consortium says the new features in SMIL (say smile) are a direct response to user and industry demand. For instance, full-motion, timed captions and labels can be directly inserted in the presentation (called smilText). SMIL’s media pan-zoom control lets people create Ken Burns-style animations for photos and visual content. And SMIL 3.0 also lets authors embed timed metadata in presentations, making SMIL a useful descriptive language for developing Semantic Web resources that evolve over time.

Users should be able to enhance video and image sites with captions, subtitles and other annotations, even if the video or images were created by somebody else. SMIL provides a standard and flexible way to accompany media with links, captions, metadata and other information that requires timing coordination.

WC3 says people can now safely add multimedia presentations to other XML applications, including HTML and SVG. And SMIL 3.0 also makes it easier to develop multimedia applications on mobile platforms. SMIL Tiny is a minimal profile of SMIL 3.0 for embedded systems and lightweight applications such as media playlists.