Swing Hacks

Play a Sound with QuickTime for Java #73

Chapter 10, Audio

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371

HACK

The one thing that’s really different is that you can play many more file for-

mats than you can with just JavaSound. Or maybe you can’t. It all depends

on what operating system you’re running on. The JMF install offers an all-

Java version and “performance packs” for some operating systems, which

use native code. The latter offer not only better performance for the media

formats supported by the all-Java version, they also integrate with the native

media library on the host operating system to play other media files, ones

that couldn’t be opened with the all-Java version alone.

This might make you deceive yourself: if you develop a JMF application on

Windows and it works with your media, it won’t necessarily work on

another operating system, either because Sun never made a performance

pack for that system (Mac OS X), or because even with the performance

pack, the native libraries don’t support that format. If you go the JMF route,

you need to rigorously test cross-platform, or you may very well have an

application that really only works on one OS.

H A C K

#73

Play a Sound with QuickTime for Java Hack #73

Using QuickTime, you can play even more kinds of sounds, but only on two

operating systems.

QuickTime for Java offers another way to significantly improve the media

capabilities of your application. Its list of supported formats is ...