Summary

This chapter is the last of three covering the handling of time-based media with the JMF. It has covered more advanced topics in time-based media handling, including the streaming of media and extending the JMF. Chapter 8 served to cover the core functionality of the JMF, whereas Chapter 7 introduced time-based media and the JMF.

More than half of the chapter is dedicated to RTP—the Real-time Transport Protocol and its integration into the JMF to support the streaming of audio and video. The fundamentals of RTP and streaming data are introduced before the particular classes involved in managing an RTP session are discussed.

The other major topic of the chapter is extending the JMF. Details of writing a new DataSource, Player, Processor, or DataSink are covered as well as the means of registering the new class so that it is available for subsequent use in any JMF-based program.

The chapter concludes with a miscellany of topics including synchronization of multiple players, interfacing the JMF to other APIs, the Java Sound API, and finally a glimpse at some of the future paths for the JMF.