Open SMI File

SMI files have various uses, some of them are presented below:

Self-Mounting Disk Image

In this section, and as its acronym indicates, an SMI (Self-Mounting Image) file is a disk image file created by Aladdin ShrinkWrap or Apple Disk Copy in Mac OS Classic (Mac OS 9 or earlier).

The SMI format contains a disk image that mounts as a disk on the computer when opened.

SMI files, similar to IMG files, were designed to make floppy disks and CDs available as digital downloads.

In this case, just double-clicking on the SMI files was enough and that caused it to load a virtual disk on the desktop of the computer.

When Mac OS X replaced Mac OS Classic, the "DiskImageMounter" utility was included in Mac OS X to mount SMI images, however, self-mounting images became less popular as such files were replaced by DMG files on Mac OS X.

SMIL Presentation

In this case, the SMI format is used as an audiovisual presentation created with the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language or SMIL, according to its acronym.

The SMI is used for multimedia presentations and slide shows, containing references to a sequence of multimedia files, as well as text and other data.

SMI files for SMIL often use the SMIL extension to avoid confusion with the Mac OS 9 SMI disk image extension, which is why the SMI extension is most often seen on Windows computers.

SAMI Subtitles File

In this case, an SMI file is a video subtitle file created in the Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange, or SAMI format, which was developed by Microsoft.

SMI is used to store closed captions that are synchronized with video playback.

The SAMI format is extremely versatile and therefore compatible with many different video players as well as subtitle editors.

Software to open an SMI file

Due to the great diversity of types of formats for the SMI extension, it is advisable to make sure, first, of the type of file you have in your hands, and then to have one of the following software packages:

• Apple Disk Utility
• ACD Systems ACDSee
• RealNetworks RealPlayer Cloud
• Gretech GOM Player
• VideoLAN VLC