JMF versus other players
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JMF versus other players
Why are other players preferred to JMF?<br>In linux JMF is the only thing we've got. Why is it such a non-preferred player? Sync issues? codec issues? all of the above? can anyone explain both for the newbies and for the more technically savvy?<br><br>Lastly, a suggestion. Maybe ELAN could have an alternative that would be common to all OSs: VLC.<br><br>thanks.<br>Francisco.<br><br>
Re: JMF versus other players
There have been a number of problems with JMF. As you suggest, precision has always been an issue, especially in start, stop and play selection behavior. JMF has a limited support for file types and, also important, it is not maintained anymore by Sun.
We have invested quite a bit of time in building a "bridge" between ELAN, written in the Java programming language, and the Windows native Direct Show/Windows Media Player. In general this solution results in improved performance.
We certainly would like to have a solution based on a player that is available on the 3 platforms, especially now that QuickTime for Java is likely to become "deprecated". MPlayer and, indeed, VLC are candidates. VLC has already a preliminary Java bridge (maybe not for all platforms yet). It's unclear (to me) what already is implemented and what problems still have to be solved.
It will take (again) a considerable amount of time to implement an ELAN player based on e.g. VLC and for 3 platforms and I don't know when we will have that time.
Han
Release of ELAN 4.3.0
