This document provides entry points for readers seeking to understand the technology of the Symbian platform Multimedia module and its documentation.
Symbian platform phones are typically loaded with multimedia gadgets such as cameras (for recording still and video images), radios, video and music players. The Multimedia module provides a means of accessing and controlling the hardware that drives these features.
Multimedia functionality is summarized below:
Playing and Recording audio and video
You can write applications to play and record audio and video:
Audio
Play recorded audio files from a device using Audio Client.
Make audio recordings from the device using Audio Client.
Record streaming audio using Streaming Audio Recorder.
Play streaming audio using Streaming Audio Player.
Video
Play recorded video files from a device using the Video Client video player.
Make video recordings files from a device using the Video Client video recorder.
Accessing multimedia hardware
Devices may include the following hardware components:
Camera - for capturing still and video images using Camera Framework.
Speech recognition - for making requests from the MMF (Multimedia Framework) to the DevASR (DevSound Automatic Speech Recognition), which are transported using the Speech Recognition Controller component.
Hardware abstraction layer - for video playing and recording using the Video HAI Component
Manipulating images
Many of the most common image manipulation techniques are provided:
Image encoding and decoding is provided using Image Conversion.
Image transformations such as rotations, masking, mirroring flipping, stretching, resizing, and many other common image transformation techniques are provided using Bitmap Transformation and Image Transformation.
Processing an image on a mobile device is provided using Image Processor Library.
The following is a list of technologies used by Multimedia to enable various features:
Exif - to include metadata for an image, such as, a time/date stamp, a description, GPS location data, an embedded thumbnail.
Codecs - to deal with (playing, recording, streaming) audio and video data in one of the many supported formats through the Symbian.
3GP Library - to read (parsing) and writing (composing) of various multimedia container formats.
Metadata Utility Library - to extract metadata from audio video and image media files.
The following sections list tutorials and example applications that can be used to play and record audio and video data, perform image processing and manipulation, and access any camera and radio tuner hardware present on a mobile phone.
Tutorials
3GP Library Tutorials
Metadata Utility Library Tutorials
Example applications