VOME: OpenMAX Compliant Media Framework for Android

The number of Android based devices continues to explode in the smartphone market. As more Android smartphones are introduced into the market the ability to differentiate continues to be a challenge for many mobile device manufactures. This blog articulates how using an OpenMAX compliant Media framework as the foundation for building versatile multimedia applications can enable device manufacturers to differentiate their smart mobile devices.

Mobile multimedia applications and services have become a key area where device manufacturers can innovate and differentiate.  Mobile consumers are demanding more video and audio applications and capabilities. In parallel, operators are seeking to increase revenue in new 3G and 4G networks by introducing various video and audio based services.  The challenge for device manufacturers is to effectively service the mobile consumer while controlling their costs and delivering innovative handsets to market in a timely fashion.
                                                                                                                 
OpenMAX compliant Media frameworks enable multimedia apps
The Media framework is the foundation for building versatile multimedia applications. The Framework coordinates and controls the data flow between different multimedia components. Android has two open source media frameworks, OpenCore and StageFright. It is well known that both these frameworks are not standards based and lack the flexibility and feature set required to easily build advanced multimedia applications. This is a significant problem for Android device manufacturers who need to shorten their development time and reduce cost while they enable innovative multimedia functionality. 

In order to address this issue, VisualOn an Open Handset Alliance and ARM Connected Community member, developed the VisualOn Media Engine (VOME), a fully OpenMAX compliant multimedia  framework. VOME gives users full flexibility to design and build their customized multimedia features based on the OpenMAX standard.  VOME is fully optimized for ARM based processors, including ARM9, ARM11, Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9.  VOME is optimized to reduce data flow overhead, reduce integration effort and can plug into hardware or software components through OpenMAX interfaces to enable a high quality multimedia experience for end users.

Key requirements
VisualOn decided to build VOME to be compliant with the OpenMAX standard to make multimedia application development and component integration very simple for the mobile device manufacturers.  Handset manufacturers can easily add new multimedia formats or integrate advanced multimedia applications by following well defined OpenMAX interfaces.  The OpenMAX interfaces also allow the device manufacturers to seamlessly plug-in hardware modules when they are available or to supplement with software modules when the hardware is not available, without making a significant change to multimedia environment.  Mobile devices can easily be configured to support different audio and video formats or configured with different multimedia applications based upon the different market requirements in the geographies where they will be purchased.

VOME is a feature rich highly optimized multimedia framework which supports advance functionality such as recording, transcoding, video trimming, etc... The advanced algorithms embedded with VOME will take care of audio video synchronization, error resiliency, rendering, etc...

Guest Partner Blog:
Dr. Bill Lin, Vice President of Engineering, VisualOn Inc., Headquartered in Los Gatos CA, Dr. Lin is an expert in video/audio codec optimization and embedded multimedia software. He has extensive working experience in the development of optimization algorithms including work with Tera Systems, Southern Company, Auburn University and Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds a Ph.D. degree from School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, a master's degree from National Cheng Kung University, and a bachelor's degree from National Taiwan University..