This section provides an overview of all the components that form the Multimedia APIs and Frameworks collection.
The Multimedia APIs and Frameworks collection provides a client API consisting of several interfaces that encapsulate a lightweight plug-in framework. The client API enables you to manipulate the audio and video features of the Symbian platform.
The following figure shows the architectural of the components that form the Multimedia APIs and Frameworks collection.
The Multimedia Framework overview details the architecture of the components that constitutes the Multimedia APIs and Frameworks collection.
The Multimedia Subsystem provides the Multimedia capabilities of the Symbian platform. It includes audio recording/playback, video recording/playback, still image conversion and camera control. It includes framework to support these, even if all these functionality are not included. The function inclusion depends on the discretion of the device creator.
The Multimedia APIs and Frameworks constitutes the following components:
Broadcast Tuner
Broadcast Transmitter
Camera API
Image Conversion Library (ICL)
Multimedia Framework (MMF)
Multimedia Utility Library
Metadata Utility Framework
Broadcast Tuner
The Tuner API is an abstract API for receiving radio broadcasts such as FM or DAB (provided that the necessary hardware is present on the phone). It is intended to provide a consistent API for application developers, that is independent of the underlying implementation and hardware specifics.
Broadcast Transmitter
The FM transmitter is an independent component, which provides control APIs for the applications to control the FM transmitter in a device.
Camera
The Onboard Camera API can be used to achieve video input streaming, and direct screen access can be used to achieve video output streaming. For more information about the Onboard Camera API, see Onboard Camera API Overview.
Image Conversion Library
The Image Conversion Library is a light-weight, client-side plug-in framework for still image codecs. A number of software codecs are shipped with the Symbian platform, most of which are un-optimised, but device creators may replace them with optimised or hardware accelerated versions. The JPEG decoder / encoder has been optimised.
Multimedia Framework
The Multimedia Framework is a light-weight, multi-threaded plug-in framework for handling multimedia data, running as one or more threads in the application process. The only controller plug-in supplied by default is a simple linear audio controller. In turn this supports a number of formats and audio data types. In addition two example controllers are supplied; one for audio (Ogg/Vorbis) and one for video (Avi/XviD).
Multimedia Utility Library
The Multimedia Utility Library provides shared utilities for the MMF.
Metadata Utility Framework
The Metadata Utility Framework provides a plug-in framework for parser plug-ins to extract metadata from audio, video and image files.
The Multimedia APIs and Frameworks collection provides cross-platform compatibility for client applications and hardware acceleration plug-in writers, and reduces the cost of porting the applications and codecs between platforms.