Here Comes the Sun (Microsystems)

As a member of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance, MPEG committee, and the MPEG-4 Industry Forum, to name a few, Sun Microsystems has been keeping a watchful eye and playing an active role in the evolution and adoption of an MPEG-4 standard.

Sun plans to integrate MPEG-4 functionality into its products, such as its own Java Media Framework (JMF). This optional package extends the Java platform by offering advanced media processing capabilities, including media capture, compression, streaming, playback and support for important media types and codecs such as M-JPEG, H.263, MP3, Real-time Transport Protocol and Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTP/RTSP), and Macromedia's Flash.

JMF 2.1.1 also supports popular media types such as QuickTime, Microsoft's AVI format, and MPEG-1. In addition, JMF 2.1.1 includes an open media architecture allowing developers to access and manipulate individual components of the media playback and capture process, such as effects, tracks, and renders, or to utilize their own custom plug-in components.

"Because it's a flexible framework, it's a perfect place for us to fit MPEG-4 technology into it," says Michael Bundschuh, engineering manager for Sun's Java Media Framework group.

The JMF API, according to Bundschuh, "provides a simple and extensible framework for time-based media, allowing you to add multimedia capabilities to your Java apps. For example, you can capture, stream and play live audio and video, both on the client and server side. JMF even has the ability to transcode, that is, to convert a media file from one format to another. And since it is a Java API, you get the ability to run on multiple platforms such as Solaris and Windows."

Sun doesn't promote MPEG-4 based on its compression capability, says Rob Glidden, marketing development manager for Sun's broadband and digital media group, "because compression capability is evolving with the overall ecosystem. The key is really the open-standard nature, the ability of multiple vendors to implement all along the value chain."

While Microsoft's and RealNetworks' spokespeople consistently point at specifications MPEG-4 currently lacks, it's important to consider what MPEG-4 already promises: a network-independent, multi-network, multi-bit-rate format.

"The simple, lowest-profile video and audio and its open standard nature is quite important and useful in itself," says Glidden. "This is only the beginning of what open standards and MPEG-4-like solutions can be delivering."

The doubts and concerns of vendors unlikely to benefit from MPEG-4 have a familiar cast given MPEG's decade-long history. "All of these questions came up on MPEG-2," says Glidden, "and it's now used by many, many millions of people."

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