We need video playlists… Ok, to be more specific, we need video players that support playlists…
I first implemented XSPF on tinkernet because it was simple, and I like what XSPF is, and can do, and I needed to test the code mentioned here. Of course without a video player that can handle XSPF, what’s the point? Well, it looks like VLC will support XSPF soon, so that’s good… (Oh, drop by the forum and leave a post asking for support if you want. )
In the meantime, I’ve been playing with SMIL just a bit, really just using Michael Sullivan’s implementation as an example. So here is what I’ve got:
Over on tinkernet, in the sidebar, is a link to the SMIL file, which should cause your browser to download the SMIL file and open it using QuickTime Player. Of course you need to have QuickTime installed, and your browser configured, blah, blah, blah… But once that’s done, you should see what we see above. QuickTime Player all set to play all the videos in the ‘playlist’ with a little menu to jump between the videos. (I guess this is QuickTime-specific SMIL, but I’m a SMIL newbie, so I’m not 100% sure what the outcome of that really is…)
Anyway, I think this is exciting, and we should thank Lucas Gonze for the XSPF stuff, and hope that others (especially software developers) see the value in playlists…