What Java Needs Now… A Great Media Library
With Java SE 6 now in beta, and Netbeans 5.0 in production, the Java platform is finally getting ready for the big time on the client. Now, one of the strengths of Java always been its libraries. So, please, let’s have some more investment in Java’s multimedia libraries (e.g. the Java Media Framework JMF).
Having out-of-the-box support for the best and latest audio and video codecs and image file formats (yes, I know there are IP issues - they need sorting them out, not ignoring!), would allow developers to write some truly amazing apps. For example, right now, the height of sophistication for web-based video is Flash e.g. (readers using RSS Readers, there’s an embedded video here, that you might not be able to see)
Now, Flash video certainly beats using Windows Media and Real Media plug-ins for embedding video; but just imagine the possiblities, if the Java platform had really great support for video…
razorshine wrote:
go check out http://www.clipstream.com
Posted 19 Feb 2006 at 11:18 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Many thanks for that razorshine - I hadn’t seen this.
However, what I was really meaning was that the Java community could really benefit now with improvements to the JMF APIs - specifically havining read/write capabilities for the latest audio and video codecs (3gpp would be a start).
All clipstream seems to be (from my ten second look - apologies to you and them if I’ve missed them doing something clever) is a simple media player applet, that looks visually less compelling than Flash-based systems. But, with Java, the potential is to build really compelling applications that let people easily do amazing things with video in a visually compelling way. The problem is, the read/write support for codecs people want to use, isn’t that great.
Posted 20 Feb 2006 at 11:01 am ¶