Summary

This chapter serves as an introduction to time-based media and the Java Media Framework (JMF), setting the stage for the next two chapters, which delve into the details of the JMF API.

The first half of the chapter provides a general and broad introduction to the concepts and practice of time-based media. The common features of all time-based media are covered before audio and video are addressed separately. A recurring theme is the high bandwidth demands of time-based media and hence the needs for compression. The alternatives in content types (architectures) and codecs for both audio and video were discussed.

The second half of the chapter introduces the JMF API. The potential of and support provided by the API is broached first. That is followed by an overview of the different levels of complexity at which the JMF can be employed together with common programming approaches when using the API. Finally, the key classes of the API are surveyed along with a synopsis of the JMF model of time. The chapter concludes with a short applet that plays media files, showing how simple it can be to write JMF programs.