Build Java Apps with Multimedia Content

Development is not limited to just Web applications, Web services and the like; right? So this time around we decided to take up something that you might encounter while developing the not-so-typical applications. Or, they might even be a bit typical ones.

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QuickTime (QT) is used widely in Web sites for displaying multi-media content. And much to your liking; they a have a whole collection of APIs in different languages for programmatically adding QT player to your application or Web page. In this article we will look into the Java based APIs for QT development. We will make an applet that displays movie text for a QT movie.

QuickTime for Java

Well as the name suggests 'QT for Java' provides the framework for developing Java applications with rich QT media capabilities. Using this, you can do anything that QT allows including (but not limited to) editing, creating movies, capturing audios/videos and 2D/3D animations. The framework consists of two layers. The Core layer provides access to the QT programming API. The second layer integrates QuickTime APIs and Java. For example, capabilities like sharing events between QT and Java etc. This layer also simplifies the usage of QuickTime API that is written in native code by providing a logical transformation of the native method calls to Java method calls. This helps developers in many ways. For example; using the API in this layer, reduces overheads associated with making native method calls directly (without using these APIs) such as parameter marshalling/de-marshalling, and checking for error conditions to name a few. In case there is an error, relevant exceptions are thrown by this layer. For details on the API reference and API docs, you can visit the URL .

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Setup

You need to do a custom setup of QT player. Choose the custom install option and go for the 'Quick Time for Java' option. Plus you need a JVM, which should be version 1.1 or higher. Additionally, you can also download the QT for Java SDK. We downloaded and extracted the version 6.1 for the SDK. You just need to Unzip the compressed file to any location of your choice on the hard disk to complete the SDK setup.

Adding movie text

Here's how to go about adding movie text using QT for Java. Our application opens a dialog box allowing user to select a QT movie and then adds the text “This from the API's” to this movie. Here is how to start off with the code.

public class PCQMText extends Frame {

public static void main (String args<>) {

new PCQMText();

}

public PCQMText() {

try {

QTSession.open();

QTFile qtf = null;

try {

qtf = QTFile.standardGetFilePreview

(QTFile.kStandardQTFileTypes);

} catch

(quicktime.io.QTIOException e) {

if (e.errorCode() != Errors.userCanceledErr)

e.printStackTrace();

else

System.out.println ("Quitting....");

QTSession.close();

System.exit(1);

}

We use QuickTime Session and QuickTime File objects initially. The former basically checks if QT is present. If found, it calls for the static 'enterMovies()' method that ultimately results in a call to the native method QuickTime::EnterMovies. These calls are accumulative i.e. for every opening of a QT Session by a call to QTSession.open(), which calls the QTSession.initialize() method, there should be a QTSession.close() method (which calls the QTSession.terminate() method. Alternately, the same applies to using QTSEssion.initialize() or QTSession.terminate() methods, if used directly. We then open a QT file through a file open dialog. Next steps are to obtain the path of the file and perform some basic editing. The editing in our case is adding the text we mentioned a little while ago. To do so, we obtain a reference to the QT movie opened into a new 'Movie' object and then extract the movies properties such as height, width etc. This is how it is done.

DataRef urlMovie = new DataRef ("file://" + qtf.getPath());

Movie m = Movie.fromDataRef (urlMovie,StdQTConstants.newMovieActive);

float textTrackHeight = 48;

QDRect movieBounds = m.getNaturalBoundsRect();

float movieWidth = movieBounds.getWidthF();

float movieHeight = movieBounds.getHeightF();

Once the basic properties are extracted we create a new movie track that spans the width of the movie selected using the 'Track' class and then position this track along the bottom of our movie. Finally, the text track is enabled.

Track textTrack = m.addTrack (movieWidth, textTrackHeight, 0);

Matrix textTrackMatrix = textTrack.getMatrix();

textTrackMatrix.translate (0, movieHeight - textTrackHeight);

textTrack.setMatrix (textTrackMatrix);

textTrack.setEnabled (true);

The last parameter in the call to addTrack() method is for volume. The zero value indicates no sound. The 'Matrix' class like any matrix in graphics operations defines the mapping of points from one coordinate space to another. The following few steps extract further the time scale of the selected movie and then initialize a 'TextMedia' object that represent the movie text to be added in QT movie.

int movieTimeScale = m.getTimeScale();

TextMedia textMedia = new TextMedia (textTrack, movieTimeScale);

QDRect textBounds = new QDRect (movieWidth, movieHeight);

The editing now begins by first sampling the time duration and then creating a String object with the text that has to be added to the movie. The String object is then used to initialize a QTPointer object that is a pointer to be used in calls to a QT movie.

textMedia.beginEdits();

TimeInfo sampleTime = new TimeInfo (0, m.getDuration());

String text = new String ("This is from the API's for Java!");

TextMediaHandler textMediaHandler = textMedia.getTextHandler();

QTPointer textPointer = new QTPointer ( text.length() + 1, true );

The Boolean parameter is for specifying whether to clear the pointer on creation or not. True indicates clearing the pointer on creation. Next, we transform our Java string to a 'C' style string for QT

textPointer.copyFromArray ( 0, text.getBytes(), 0, text.length() );

textMediaHandler.addTextSample (textPointer,QDFont.getFNum("Times"),20,0,QDColor.Yellow, QDColor.white,QDConstants.teCenter,textBounds,StdQTConstants.dfClipToTextBox | StdQTConstants.dfKeyedText,0,0,0,null,sampleTime.duration );

textMedia.endEdits();

The endEdits() method closes the editing part of our applet. Next, we insert the media, write the edited movie object to the QT file and close the sessions to end our exercise.

textTrack.insertMedia (sampleTime.time, 0, sampleTime.duration, 1 );

OpenMovieFile outStream = OpenMovieFile.asWrite (qtf);

m.updateResource (outStream, StdQTConstants.movieInDataForkResID, qtf.getName());

} catch (QTException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

QTSession.close();

System.exit(0);

}

QTSession.close();

System.out.println ("Done.");

System.exit(0);

}

That's all for adding a movie text to a QT movie. Of course, you can do a lot more editing to QT movies using these libraries or APIs, but we took a trivial example for simplicity sake. So, once you are done with the samples in the QT for Java SDK and have a grip on what these classes are for, go ahead and play around with the movies using these relatively easy to use APIs than the native libraries for becoming a programmatic movie editor.