Khronos Group releases OpenMAX AL 1.1 and OpenSL ES 1.1

The OpenMAX AL (Application Layer) is designed to simplify the development of cross-platform multimedia applications for mobile devices. The independent Khronos Group industry consortium has now released version 1.1 of this high-level C interface; as the top layer of the OpenMAX API, it enables developers to create platform-independent player and recorder objects, link them to configurable input and output devices and control these devices from simple output windows; these include headsets, speakers, cameras, LEDs and haptic (touch) devices. An Integration Layer (OpenMAX IL) is available for low-level file manipulations and for using codecs. OpenMAX AL supports both hardware acceleration and software emulation for multimedia applications.

Integrating the OpenSL ES 1.1 (Open Sound Library for Embedded Systems) audio API, which was released at the same time, also enables applications to access hardware-accelerated audio features. The specification supports both current hardware and older devices, ensuring optimum sound quality in each case. Depending on requirements, applications can, for example, produce 3D sound or control MIDI output devices.

For developers wanting to incorporate digital TV features, the Khronos Group has released the OpenMAX AL DTV Extensions. The specification supports various TV standards including DVB-H, ISDB-T and T-DMB.

Among the companies involved in developing the OpenMAX AL specification are AMD, Creative, Ericsson, Google, Nokia, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and SRS Labs.

(crve)