Learning Java, 4th Edition

Java Media Framework

Get some popcorn—Java can play movies! To do this, though, we’ll need one of Java’s standard extension APIs, the Java Media Framework (JMF). The JMF defines a set of interfaces and classes in the javax.media and javax.media.protocol packages. You can download the latest JMF from Oracle’s website. To use the JMF, add jmf.jar to your classpath. Or, depending on what version of the JMF you download, a friendly installation program may do this for you.

We’ll only scratch the surface of JMF here, by working with an important interface called Player. Specific implementations of Player deal with different media “container” types, such as Apple QuickTime (.mov) and Windows Video (.avi). For a full list of supported media types and codecs, consult the latest JMF documentation. There are also players for audio types, including MP3. Players are handed out by a high-level class in the JMF called Manager. One way to obtain a Player is to specify the URL of a movie.

What about Windows media player format as well as MP3?

    Player player = Manager.createPlayer(url);

Because video files are so large and playing them requires significant system resources, Players have a multistep lifecycle from the time they’re created to the time they actually play something. We’ll look at only one step, realizing. In this step, the Player determines (by looking at the media file) the system resources that it needs to play the media file.

    player.realize();

The realize() method returns right away; ...