Java Media APIs: Cross-Platform Imaging, Media, and Visualization presents integrated Java media solutions that demonstrate the best practices for using this diverse collection. According to Sun MicroSystems, "This set of APIs supports the integration of audio and video clips, animated presentations, 2D fonts, graphics, and images, as well as speech input/output and 3D models." By presenting each API in the context of its appropriate use within an integrated media application, the authors both illustrate the potential of the APIs and offer the architectural guidance necessary to build compelling programs.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

A decent introduction, but weak on the info I wanted - 2004-02-07
Reviewer Rating:
This book is more up to date than many of the other books on JMF. And the author does explain quite a bit about media timing, and the various classes involved, etc. And I even give him credit for taking extra time to spell out some particularly confusing areas, such as the many Sun classes and interfaces with similar names.

However, the specific reason I bought this book was to learn how to manipulate the individual bits and bytes of audio and video, and the book did not provide a single JMF example. Granted, this would have required some low level discussions of video or audio formats, but at least one example of each would have been appreciated.

Even more frustrating, the author mentions again and again how one "could" do this and "could" do that - and the chapter and section heades indicated that we'll eventually get there, but at the end he punts and refers to the Sun web site. As an example, he talks about how you could add a custom JMF Codec or Processor to add a simple reverb to an audio stream - this is mentioned several times - but when you finally get to where the example should be - he pulls the "well of course this would beyond the scope of the book" - LAME! So I felt that the book really did promise this, and then did not deliver.

Fortunately I only paid $10 for it, and there was some useful info.

Has some nuggets if you are willing to dig - 2005-11-25
Reviewer Rating:
This book is a poor overall introduction to the individual Java Media API's. The first four chapters, primarily about the Java 2D API, which is technically not a Java Media API at all, are not as good as the book by Knudsen on the same subject. Chapter five is about the Image I/O API, which contains the codecs for the various image types so that image files can be easily written to and read from. This chapter does have some useful code and information on using this API, and the code is worth examining. Likewise, chapter six, which is about the Java Advanced Imaging API does a pretty good job of discussing the JAI and has some useful code snippets that help the reader see how to use the JAI methods in a program. Where the book really falls down is in the chapters devoted to the Java Media Framework (JMF). Code for creating a player is shown, but the player part of JMF has been around since release 1.0 and is not hard to master. Instead, the authors waste your time with program after program that prints statistics about available capture devices and other information that does not really have anything to do with processing media. What the author should have done in these chapters is have examples that are at least as good as the examples that you can download from Sun Microsystems. The questions the author should have answered about JMF are: How do you frame seek inside a movie? How do you create a movie from a list of JPEGS and vice versa? How do you screen grab?...and so on.
The third part of the book is on 3D graphics, virtual reality, and visualization. The overview the book gives on Java 3D is not as good as the book "Java 3D Programming" by Selman, but overall it is a decent explanation with some useful code snippets. The book does a fair job talking about some of the applications of Java 3D in the realms of VR and visualization. People interested in virtual reality programming that would like to use Java 3D will find this information useful. The best chapter of the book, in my opinion, is the unique chapter 14 on integrating the various Java Media APIs. The two fascinating examples shown are for a streaming 3D chat room using JMF and Java 3D together, and real-time terrain rendering using the JAI and Java 3D together. I implemented the first example and part of the second example, and so far I have not found any errors in the authors' code. The chat room had problems because of the JMF itself, not because of the code.
In summary, if you want to learn about the individual Java Media APIs, there are better books from which to learn. In particular, Java 2D and Java 3D are explained better and in more detail in other volumes. The chapters on the JAI, however, are pretty good and are recommended. The main course of JMF 2.0, the processor which enables frame-by-frame control of media, has numerous bugs and since the dotcom bust has basically become abandoned by Sun Microsystems. If you want to control media via Java, you would be well advised to switch to Quicktime for Java. However, if you are set on using JMF, this book is really not helpful with anything other than the media player. However, if you are interested in visualization and virtual reality and using Java3D to do it, this book is very useful. Likewise, if you are interested in integrating the various Java Media API's chapter 14 is a worthwhile read.

Skims over topics , Code for all chapters not available - 2005-08-16
Reviewer Rating:
Well, the book tries to cover JAI, JMF and J3D all in one book.
And does not do too good a job on either (JAI and J3D). I have not tried the JMF chapters. Also my major peeve with the book is that the code for J3D is not available online. I think this was just rushed out of the door.

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