Introduction to the Media Component

The active growth of media on the web has made video and audio content an integral part of Rich Internet Applications. For many years the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) has lacked a robust and facile media player, so the initial design of the Media Component was required to make it cross-platform, easily configurable, and enabling native support. The Java Media Component (JMC) has a simple API, so developers can easily incorporate media into their applications.

Figure 1: Media Component

JMC supports a cross platform video format enabling the following native platforms:

• Windows
• DirectShow
• Mac
• CoreAudio
• CoreVideo
• Linux and Solaris
• GStreamer

Note: Video support on the Macintosh and Linux platform is not available in the preview release.

Moreover, the idea of going beyond traditional rectangular video and broadening horizons of rich GUI applications led to the lightweight implementation of the JMC, integration with Scene Graph, and employment of the JavaFX Script Language capabilities. A separate package that provides wrappers of the JMC functionality was added to the JavaFX SDK Runtime.

The following sections provide the background information you need to start using the JMC functionality:

Architectural Overview

This section describes internal architecture of the JMC and provides a brief overview of JavaFX Media Classes.

Player Demo

This section shows a simple media demo and provides some practical advices on how to integrate media in your application.