Learning Java

Working with Movies

Get some popcorn—Java can play movies, with a little work. You’ll need to download and install 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. To use the JMF, add jmf.jar to your class path. Depending on what version of the JMF you download, the 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 types, like Apple QuickTime (.mov) and Windows Video (.avi). 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:

Player player = Manager.createPlayer(url);

Because video files are so large, and playing them requires significant system resources, Players have a multi-step lifecycle from the time they’re created to the time they actually play something. We’ll just look at one step, realizing. In this step, the Player finds out (by looking at the media file) what system resources it will need to actually play the media file.

player.realize( );

The realize( ) method returns right away; it kicks off the realizing process in a separate thread. When the player is finished realizing, it sends out an event. Once you receive this event, you can obtain a Component that will show the media. The Player has to be realized first so ...