Tag Archives: gphone

Android Multimedia SDK

Google has unveiled their mighty Android platform SDK today. It apparently based uses that phone-based flavor of Java. An ergonomic Eclipse-based development environment and a software emulator are both provided for your experimentation.


Android logo

That’s nice. But let’s cut to what really matters — multimedia. The SDK specifies the Media API along with its MediaPlayer and MediaRecorder APIs. According to the AudioEncoder class, audio can be encoded to AMR-NB. The VideoEncoder class specifies H.263, H.264, and MPEG-4 SP. All pretty standard for a mobile application, I suppose.

Who handles the multimedia heavy lifting? Vitor noticed this press release and associated fluffy overview from PacketVideo

It’s Java, though, and that means obfuscated Java bytecode programs. Time for a renaissance for my Java de-obfuscator?

Android Multimedia

I honestly do not understand much about Google’s new Android platform. But if I gather correctly from the surrounding hype and press releases, it’s the answer to all of my prayers and will make every single one of my dreams come true.

If you’re like me (and, let’s face it, if you read this blog then you probably are), you are interested in the multimedia features of this proposed platform.


Android phone logo image

The literature that I have perused thus far has not made any remarkable claims with respect to multimedia capabilities amidst all the other wish-granting facets of the phone framework. The above picture, which seems to be the mascot image, specifically sports that ubiquitous symbol of multimedia playback — the rightward-facing arrow in a circle.

Since “open source” is a key selling point of this platform, what are they going to use for a general multimedia backend? I can hardly imagine.