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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - MMS & Advanced Issues ⬆ Archive through June 06, 2005 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Royce Unregistered guest |
I've managed to configure both the web and email interfaces for sending MMS. I've configured the routing using MM1, which is how i needed it to function for my needs. The MMS i am sending is an animated .GIF file. Now both methods of sending (ie. web and email) are sending the file as expected. The only subtle difference is that from the web interface, when you view the MMS on the mobile (a T630), the animated gif is actually animated. When you view the MMS sent via the email gateway, the gif is not animated. You have to save it first, then view it via My Pictures and then you see it animated. When i send the email I'm just inserting the picture into an HTML email. There is nothing else in the message body. I also tried sending the picture as an attachment, but this did not work (the attachment was ignored). Is there something i need to watch out for when using the email gateway? What is the correct way to format MMS emails with animated gifs so they are received properly and will playback? Thanks. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4129 Registered: 10-2002 |
When you are sending the message out via e-mail, we simply parse the attachments and the message text. So I would expect the same behaviour in either interface. If you send the message as HTML ... most e-mail clients include both an HTML and a text part of the message. And any included graphics are attachments (that are simply referenced by the HTML). Our e-mail gateway is going to ignore/skip the HTML part, it will only parse out the text part and any attachments. As a test, I just sent out an animated GIF via e-mail as an attachment to a K700i, and it worked just fine. The one thing that is different is that we auto-generate a SMIL file when a message comes in through the e-mail interface. Whereas if you post via the web interface and do not include a SMIL file we send the message without one. SMIL is basically a slide show presentation language that controls how the message is displayed. We did make some minor tweaks recently in the format of the SMIL that is auto-generated. There is an update referenced in the following thread: http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/53/8153.html And you can disable this auto SMIL generation by editing MMSC.INI, and under the [MMSC] header, adding EMailAutoSmil=No. That may be worth a try as well. -bn | |||
| Royce Unregistered guest |
Hi Bryce, I tried the MMSC.INI setting and it resolved the issue with the animated gif. Thanks for the help! | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4144 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Royce, That is bizarre. I tried sending out another animated GIF to a K700i just now, and it plays just fine when SMIL is present. Perhaps there are quirks with different firmware versions. Beware that when SMIL is not used, it can be awkward to view objects in some phones, especially the SonyEricsson P800/P900. -bn | |||
| Tyler Unregistered guest |
Hi Bryce, I'm new to this. I reached a phase where i need to send the MMS from the telephone to an email. I just want to know how can we send this mms so that it would be received in the email as an animated presentation. Thanks for your help | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4475 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Tyler, Basically, you're not going to find that, unless you write the e-mail client. Theoretically it is possible ... it just doesn't work in practice. Here's an overview of the issue. MMS messages are basically multipart messages, similar in concept to SMTP messages. In the SMTP world, if a message has attachments, the attachments are all encoded together in a single message file using the MIME format. MMS also uses MIME, although its over-the-air format is a binary representation of MIME. So far, so good. The problem is on the presentation side. MMS messages uses SMIL as their presentation language. So an MMS message generally contains a SMIL file as one of the parts in its multipart message. The SMIL file then references other parts of the multipart message in its presentation. This is similar in concept to an SMTP message using HTML for its presentation. When you have an HTML presentation within an SMTP message, images (and other content) within the HTML can either be referenced via an external HTTP link to a web server, or via a link to content that was also included within the multipart message. If you use an e-mail client that supports HTML presentation, then the e-mail client resolves these links for presentation. But if you use an older e-mail client that doesn't support HTML presentation, it will just see the HTML file as an attachment. And if you open the attachment in a web browser, you will only be able to see images that resolve to external web server links ... not image links that point to other pieces/parts of content in the multipart message. This is because when the e-mail client passes the HTML attachment to the web browser, it only passes the HTML attachment. So, basically, the e-mail presentation of an HTML format message, where the images are included as additional parts of the message, only works when the e-mail client has specific logic to support the display of HTML format messages. Moving on to SMIL ... for an MMS message, the SMIL is always going to reference content that is in other parts of the multipart message. So while you can launch the received SMIL file from the e-mail client using a SMIL player such as Real Player ... the SMIL player then does not have access to the other parts of the message. And it therefore cannot actually display the presentation. That's why I say that in order to support the SMIL presentation, you'd have to write your own e-mail client or update/extend an existing client. In most cases, it would be enough if when you launch the SMIL file into the player, you also extracted the other message parts into the same temporary directory that you place the SMIL into. -bn | |||
