System, method and engine for playing SMIL based multimedia contents

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 next level SMIL engines, remote media proxies, or local media playing devices;
• a plurality of remote media proxies for receiving instructions from 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, wherein each of said remote media proxies 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.

A method for playing SMIL based multimedia content comprising the 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, wherein said 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.