Free Speech Internet Television (FSitv) this week announced a $2000 prize for the best online audio/video presentation demonstrating the Internet’s “potential for the global distribution of democratic, progressive media” using RealNetworks’ G2/SMIL technology.
The contest is a part of FSitv’s year-long “freespeech online video festival,”
a celebration of the thousands of independent filmmakers, journalists, and
activists who are starting to look towards Internet audio and video as their
primary form of communication.
Free Speech Internet Television’s director Joey Manley believes that
RealNetworks’ RealSystem is the inexpensive global distribution mechanism that
the typically underbudgeted independent production has been waiting for.
All submissions to the FreeSpeech Online Video Festival must be made
online–using FTP or as an e-mail attachment–before March 1, 1999 in any
format which can be viewed using RealNetworks’ G2 Player.
G2 was chosen “because it supports multiple datatypes–not just proprietary
ones–and because it conforms to the W3C’s SMIL recommendation,” stated
Manley.
SMIL, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is an XML sibling that is used for synchronizing various media elements, including audio, video, and text, in one presentation.
Submission guidelines and festival bylaws are available for review at the FreeSpeech Festival Web page. The RealSystems’ G2 Player may be downloaded from the RealNetworks Web site.
For a tutorial on how to create SMIL/G2 presentations, check out the WebDeveloper.com G2/SMIL Tutorial.
