Oracle Media Net

This product is the link between the Media Server and the outside world. It allows for the quick transmission of media images over a network. Because media images are much larger than textual or numeric data, the networking tasks and optimizations take on a greater importance. To have successful media online, one must have the ability to move this huge amount of information quickly across a network.

The Media Net really consists of three processes:

•  The OMN Address Server (mnaddrsrv)

•  The OMN Name Server (mnrpcnmsrv)

•  The OMN Process Server (mnprocsrv)

These three processes create a layer over the inherent network in the same way as SQL*Net. This shelters people using media data from network specifics. With the OMN Name Server, Oracle’s Media Applications know exactly which servers are available to “pump” media data from.

Oracle Media Objects

Oracle Media Objects (OMO) is the tool that allows for the joining together of media objects into a real-time stream of entertaining or informative media. The main class that this package revolves around is the media object.

Oracle Media Objects is a media authoring tool because it allows you to build complex media objects (like a commercial) from basic media data such as sound, static bitmaps, and digital video streams. It is important to understand that the authoring tool, to a great degree, will determine what the limits of your video presentation will be.

When speaking of Oracle Media Objects, we of course ask ourselves, “What about the methods?” All objects come with methods, ways of doing things. Oracle uses a scripting language called Oracle Media Talk, which allows us to extend the basic authoring capabilities and create custom video methods.

Creating a multimedia commodity such as a movie consists first of locating digital sources, such as picture and sound, and then editing those sources into a “final cut.” After this is finished, a new object emerges that is not always the sum of its parts (see Figure 32.5).

Figure 32.5.  The final media product is a set of Oracle media objects edited for consumption.

Because of this creative process, the authoring tool must offer as much flexibility as possible. The tool must also provide organization to help media authors organize the sometimes chaotic and large sets of data objects with which they work. Oracle Media Objects needs to be a virtual production studio and editing room used for the creation of media presentations.

The Components of Oracle’s Media Objects

Oracle Media Objects comes with the basic building blocks for defining most media presentations. Here are some of the major objects and their uses for the aspiring media author.

•  Bitmap. This object allows for the manipulation of bitmap images in the video presentation. You could be creating an interactive history lesson on multimedia and be using this object to import scanned photographs of the Civil War. The interesting thing about bitmaps is that they are very large objects compared to a text string or a number. Yet these objects are important in multimedia backgrounds.

•  Movie. This is probably the most complex object within Oracle’s Media Objects. A movie is a set of video images that are played in a certain sequence at a certain speed. Oracle’s movie object allows the user to receive either real-time video or video from a huge file of bit images. With the authoring tool, users can edit video in the same way one would edit movie video in a traditional studio.

•  Sound. This object allows for a mixing studio of digital sounds. Sounds can be imported from outside sources or played from sound files on disk. This object gives the user control over sound modification, fading, and echo, and allows the user to specify small sections of a sound to be spliced with other sections. This object and its methods create a virtual mixing studio for the media author.

•  Pallette. Many times video images are first changed in terms of their color scheme. Oracle offers the Palette object to allow the media author the ability to change the color and tones of any visual object.

•  Path. The path object allows the video author to take images and animate them. This is helpful for traditional animations like games, or for new forms of media advertising. For instance, you can have a bitmap object of an airplane and set it in motion along a path. To do this you specify a series of points the object can travel against. Moving images like these make for more intuitive media presentations (see Figure 32.6).

Figure 32.6.  By setting up an animated path for animation you can present a travel itinerary easier.

•  Button. This object allows the media author to accept user control in the navigation through a media presentation. It might be used as a list of choices regarding an online training program (see Figure 32.7).

Figure 32.7.  Buttons can be used to allow users to choose video from smaller preview windows.

•  Field. This might be a simple text field to allow a customer to search for a movie name and then simply rent the video for display in their own home (see Figure 32.8).

Figure 32.8.  A simple field to search for video can add a great deal of power to a video library or Video on Demand (VOD).

•  Shape. To give many media applications structure and form, geometric shapes, such as an ellipse, can create custom boundaries and methods for displaying video. Oracle has incorporated shape objects to allow for this type of media authoring (see Figure 32.9).

Figure 32.9.  By inserting video into small frames, you can use multiple presentations to teach.

Additional objects we haven’t mentioned, like pick-lists, data grids, and group radio buttons, provide more traditional ways to allow users to interactively design and build a video presentation. This enables you to create applications that have both video and many non-video components, such as data-entry screens and traditional menus.

You must remember that, along with these objects, you have the Oracle Media authoring environment, which is a graphical front-end combined with a powerful scripting language. Media objects can be dragged on to a canvas with many layers. Painting tools allow the author touch-up capability with his or her media editing. Along with the graphical tools, this front end allows the user to enter the scripting language of Oracle Media Talk.