Using Java Media Framework 1.1 to play video on Psion 5mx

Hi all

Some years ago I used to dabble in programming my Psion Series 5mx. It's a old, slow machine by today's standards, but is still loved by many. It runs EPOC/Symbian OS 5.0 Although an MP3 player was recently written for it, until my knowledge no-one has come up with a video player. Until now (please stop me if this is old news!)

The other day, I dusted my 5mx off, and started to dabble again. Coincidentally browsing through old Java mailing list emails from Sun, I happened to notice one about JMF 1.1, which works with JDK 1.1.8. Well, the 5mx has a 1.1.8 runtime engine. So I got hold of the JMF 1.1. classes (only 500K) and installed them. I ran the SimplePlayer.class and hey presto, video on the 5mx.

It plays Quicktime (.mov) and AVI files, but you need to lower the quality of your video for it to play satisfactorily.

- 5 fps, Cinepak compression, 7 kBytes/sec data rate
- uLaw 2:1 sound compression set to 8 kHz

For a pure Java implementation it's pretty darn impressive.

You can download the JMF classes from here:

http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/DVT/Projekte/XEaB/stuff/jmf11-alljava-nomedia.zip

Have fun!

Phil Gooch

Hi,
I was exited to see your message. the next thing i did was downloading the JMF 1.1 and trying it on my netbook. Unfortunately, i'm not familiar at all with all these java thing and i can't seemed to get it to work.
After extracting all files from the JMF zip, there wasn't any icon shown on my extra bar.
I also read from another site saying that we need to install Java Runtime Engine first... Confused!!
Can you pls help me to solve this on my netbook... or could it be that i doesn't work on the netbook at all...
Someone, please help!

Eric

[TheGuru]

Oh boy!. This is really exciting news. Are you guys aware of any java based codecs
for playing RealAudio files ?. This is exactly I was looking for. If you guys find any spec for decoding real audio files, pls let me know. I can code this stuff. Java is my area.

thanks,
TheGuru.

Originally Posted by ericnetbook

Hi,
I was exited to see your message. the next thing i did was downloading the JMF 1.1 and trying it on my netbook. Unfortunately, i'm not familiar at all with all these java thing and i can't seemed to get it to work.
After extracting all files from the JMF zip, there wasn't any icon shown on my extra bar.
I also read from another site saying that we need to install Java Runtime Engine first... Confused!!
Can you pls help me to solve this on my netbook... or could it be that i doesn't work on the netbook at all...
Someone, please help!

Eric

Originally Posted by ericnetbook

Hi,
I was exited to see your message. the next thing i did was downloading the JMF 1.1 and trying it on my netbook. Unfortunately, i'm not familiar at all with all these java thing and i can't seemed to get it to work.
After extracting all files from the JMF zip, there wasn't any icon shown on my extra bar.
I also read from another site saying that we need to install Java Runtime Engine first... Confused!!
Can you pls help me to solve this on my netbook... or could it be that i doesn't work on the netbook at all...
Someone, please help!

Eric

There's a step-by-step instructions here: http://web.onetel.net.uk/~philgooch/psion/video/ Give it a whirl!

Originally Posted by ericnetbook

Hi,
I was exited to see your message. the next thing i did was downloading the JMF 1.1 and trying it on my netbook. Unfortunately, i'm not familiar at all with all these java thing and i can't seemed to get it to work.
After extracting all files from the JMF zip, there wasn't any icon shown on my extra bar.
I also read from another site saying that we need to install Java Runtime Engine first... Confused!!
Can you pls help me to solve this on my netbook... or could it be that i doesn't work on the netbook at all...
Someone, please help!

Eric