SAMI


Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange is a Microsoft accessibility initiative released in 1998. The structured markup language is designed to simplify creating subtitles for media playback on a PC.

Overview

A SAMI file provides closed caption support for multimedia formats. Generally, a multimedia file is played by a media player such as Windows Media Player. Media players that support closed captioning and SAMI format may display the contents of the included SAMI file.
A SAMI file is a plain text file and therefore can be created or modified in any text editor. Its structure is very similar to HTML. The files may have either .smi or .sami filename extensions, although using .smi may cause a filename extension collision, since Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language files and Macintosh self mounting images also use this filename extension.

Supported HTML tags and CSS

SAMI format is similar to HTML and CSS; in fact, SAMI implements a subset of both. SAMI does not require strict tag matching.
NameDescription
BBold text style
BASEFONTBase font size
BDOI18N BiDi override
BIGLarge text style
BLOCKQUOTELong quotation
BRForced line break
CAPTIONTable caption
CENTERShorthand for DIV align=center
COLTable column
COLGROUPTable column group
DDDefinition description
DIVGeneric language/style container
DLDefinition list
DTDefinition term
FONTLocal change to font
H1Heading
H2Heading
H3Heading
H4Heading
H5Heading
H6Heading
HRHorizontal rule
IItalic text style
IMGEmbedded image
LIList item
OLOrdered list
PParagraph
PREPreformatted text
QShort inline quotation
SStrike-through text style
SMALLSmall text style
SPANGeneric language/style container
STRIKEStrike-through text
SUBSubscript
SUPSuperscript
TABLEN/A
TBODYTable body
TDTable data cell
TFOOTTable footer
THTable header cell
THEADTable header
TRTable row
TTTeletype or monospaced text style
UUnderlined text style
ULUnordered list

Example

Here's an example SAMI file. It sets the time to milliseconds. It uses CSS for formatting both the source and text lines and it supports language selection.. Each SYNC block sets the start time for the caption. A new caption is displayed every second. The Class= identifies the language. The ID=Source indicates the source/speaker line; the default is the closed caption. The identifier name need not be "Source"; it may be any name.
The Microsoft parser is fragile. Formatting information can be added to the closed caption information, but adding format information to the source line can have unpredictable results. Defining more than one ID can have unpredictable results.



SAMI Example

Media
Metrics
Spec





The Speaker


SAMI 0000 text


Le narrateur


Texte SAMI 0000




SAMI 1000 text


Texte SAMI 1000




SAMI 2000 text


Texte SAMI 2000




SAMI 3000 text


Texte SAMI 3000





Association with media

The player needs to know how to associate a particular media file to a SAMI file. Sometimes that is achieved by using the same filename as the underlying media file. For example, when Windows Media Player opens the sound file cheap44.wav, it checks to see if the file cheap44.smi exists in the same folder. If it does, WMP uses that file to display closed captions.
Alternatively, the association can be made explicit using an entry in an Advanced Stream Redirector file. The user opens the ASX file instead.


ASXHEAD This is the shows abstract
ASXHEAD The show title goes here
Author Name
2002 - company name


ASX This is the clips abstract
ASX The title for the clip goes here
ASX Your Name
ASX 2000 - company name

Software support

The following is a list of software that can play SAMI along with multimedia contents: