The QNX Aviage Multimedia Suite offers a complete feature and functionality set — everything developers need to quickly build and deploy the best possible multimedia products for the boards the customer chooses. Key functionality includes:

• device and mediastore insertion and removal — HDD, CD, DVD, USB key with media, etc.
• mediastore synchronization — find, itemize, extract, and manage media content, metadata and artwork
• input and output media connection management
• extensible support for specialized consumer devices, such as iPods, Zunes, Certified Windows Vista media players, including DRM (Digital Rights Management)
• hardware offload to digital signal processors (DSPs)

Value highlights

The QNX Aviage Multimedia Suite has been designed, built and deployed with the same commitment to performance and reliability as the time-tested QNX microkernel OS.

Market-focused hardware support — support for reference boards (CPU and DSP combinations) required by consumer and automotive OEMs.

Component stability — an easy-to-use API to stable, proven components. Adapt multimedia implementations quickly to meet ever-changing market requirements without concern for the integrity or stability of the underlying software.

Risk-free upgrades — replace or upgrade underlying components, such as decoders, without any change to HMIs. Add new media storage devices, new streaming content or new DRM techniques without upsetting original device behavior.

Easy configuration — adapt system behavior to meet diverse and changing user and implementation requirements by simple edits to text configuration files.

Embedded focus — control ROM and RAM requirements by removing unneeded components, or by restricting the requirements needed by specified components. Contain a component failure and restart the component without a system restart.

Fast boot and instant power off — access media content with no intrinsic delay after a cold boot. Power off a device at any time, even while writing to storage media.

Consistent HMI response times — present the user with quick and consistent HMI response times. A user pressing a button or a touch screen gets the same system response, regardless of the current activity — ripping a CD, recording XM radio, or simply playing music.

Data integrity — ensure data integrity with reliable filesystems for embedded hard drives and large storage media.

Network-readiness — share inputs (media storage) and outputs (speakers/displays) on a network. Networking design supports:

• wired networks
• lossy networks (wireless)
• encryption, such as DTCP-[IP] Industry standards — support for:
• programming and configuration: POSIX and SQL
• connectivity
• media storage and connectivity
• media decode and encode

Target and Host O/S Support

The QNX Multimedia Suite can be run on QNX Neutrino targets on X86, PPC, SH4 or ARM platforms. It can be installed on hosts running:

• Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or Vista
• Linux Red Hat, Ubuntu or SUSE
• QNX Software Development Platform running as a self-hosted QNX Neutrino system.

The MME is designed to simplify and speed development of end-user applications that require device and filesystem access, content synchronization, playback control, and audio and graphics delivery. It handles multiple clients, sessions and streams, and abstracts hardware and protocol dependencies from other functional areas.

Interfaces

The QNX Multimedia Suite API includes a primary interface and a secondary interface:

• primary interface (MME) — offers the media management functionality required of a multimedia middleware platform
• secondary interface (QDB) — offers the required database functionality Together the primary and secondary interfaces offer multimedia applications a consistent API that provides:
• media transport, rendering and control — control of playback, and of aspects of media rendering such as volume, brightness, and playback modes (MME)
• notification — receiving information about the status of media, devices and operations; and effecting changes to media library content (MME)
• navigation — browsing media devices that support internal navigation, such as a DVD menu system or an iPod (MME or QDB, or both)
• database capabilities — searching, sorting, organizing, and updating of media information and metadata (QDB)

Together the MME and the QDB make up the interface to HMI client applications, providing them with an API to control, browse, copy or rip, and play media, as well as the ability to monitor and manage multimedia processing.

Control of lower-level components

HMIs do not normally need to interface with the QNX Multimedia Suite’s lower-level. The primary interface (the MME) controls the low-level components that directly access and process media data.

QNX Aviage Multimedia Suite architecture

The QNX Aviage Multimedia Suite architecture showing the MME and QDB interfaces

HMIs do not normally have to interface with the QNX Multimedia Suite’s lower-level components. However, knowing something about these components is useful both for understanding how the Multimedia Suite works and when configuring it for optimal performance in its destined environment. These components include:

• components that provide access to media devices and mediastores
• components responsible for media stream processing and rendering, for managing complex media streams, and for performing tasks that include CD and DVD playback, file playback, media copying, and media recording

MME components

High-level view of the MME components

Other low-level components that are not specific to the MME, but which the MME uses, provide:

• access to data on block-oriented devices and filesystems
• access to media on USB stores
• an abstraction of media output devices

Media transport, control and rendering

The QNX Multimedia Suite API provides access to a lower level component, which offers low-level transport, control and rendering of media data.

The HMI passes instructions through the primary interface (the MME), which then specifies the task, the media input source, the output device, the class of graph it requires, and a name for the graph instance it will use. The media transport, control and rendering component uses this information to create a graph instance, which processes the media.

Media stream processing

The QNX Multimedia Suite’s implements a multimedia framework: a collection of filters for implementing specific media stream processing functions, such as the parsing or decryption of data. This framework includes:

• readers
• parsers — MPEG bit stream, WAV format and AVI format
• decoders — MPEG audio and video, and DIVX
• encoders — MPEG audio and video encoders

To process a multimedia stream, the QNX Multimedia Suite’s media transport, control and rendering component selects from this framework only the filters it needs to get the multimedia data, process it, and send it to a target device.

The multimedia framework uses the QNX Addon Interfaces library to define its standard interfaces, so that new components, such as codecs written by QNX or by third parties, are easily incorporated as they become available. In many cases, these additions can be made without recompiling the framework or the applications that use it.

The complete QNX Multimedia Suite documentation is available in the Foundry27 Multimedia Project.

Media stores

• USB mass storage, SD
  
• NOR Flash, NAND Flash
  
• CDDA (Red Book)
  
• CD-ROM (Yellow Book), CD-R/RW (Orange Book)
  
• DVD-ROM
  
• P-ATA, S-ATA embeddable harddrive support
  

File systems

• DOS FAT16/32
  
• UDF 2.00 / 2.01
  
• ISO-9660+Joliet
  
• Transaction-based for NAND Flash¹
  

Internationalization

• Unicode UTF-8 storage, transcoding, and presentation
  

Software decoders

• MP3
  
  • Standard decode (ISO-11172 Layer 1,2,3)
    
  • Floating point for all processors, fixed point available for ARM
    
  • MPEG-2 Audio Layer 1,2,3 (ISO-13818) decode
    
  • MPEG-2.5 decode
    
  • MPEG Surround decode (in legacy mode)
    
  • VBR and CBR, mono and two-channel stereo
    
• WMA9
  
  • Standard: Floating and fixed point
    
  • WMA9 Lossless
    
  • VBR and CBR, mono and two-channel stereo
    
• OggVorbis
  
  • Ver1 : 44.1 KHz Stereo
    
• AAC-LC
  
  • MPEG-2 Part 7 AAC decode (formerly ISO/IEC 13818-7)
    
  • Floating point
    
  • m4a, mp4 parsing
    
• PCM (WAV)
  
• MPEG-4 container, .m4a
• MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264), MPEG-4 video, MPEG-2 video, H.263 video for Intel©
• DVD-V navigator
• Software encode options
  

Hardware assist ²

• Texas Instruments DSP audio / video codec integration including DVD navigation and playback
  
  • TI Jacinto
    
• Renesas optimized software codecs
• Intel Performance Primitive codecs
• TI OMAP3 Codec Engine codecs

Media metadata

• MP3 tags: ID3 v1 and v22/v23/v24
  
• WMA9 header
  
• OGG Vorbis v1 header
  
• AAC header (iTunes tags)
  
• CD-text
  
• MP3/WMA album art
  

Playlists

• M3U standard and extended
• iTunes (XML)
• PLS (Standard)
• WAX/ASX
• RMP (Real Media Player)

Images³

• JPEG ISO/IEC IS 10918/ITU-T T.81
  
• BMP (up to 32bit)
  
• PNG, PCX, TGA, SGI
  
• GIF-87, GIF-89a
  

Portable device support

• iPod serial + USB, analog output
  
• iPod USB direct connect, digital output
• Zune
• digital Certified for Windows Vista media players (Media Transfer Protocol) + WMDRM10
  

Digital rights management support

• Expandable for future DRM schemes
• WMDRM10
• Apple authentication IC with distributed access

Multimedia ecosystem

• Partnerships with leading software suppliers including DVD/VCD-navigation, music-database, and DSP-solution vendors

1 Available in QNX Transaction Filesystem option
2 Requires hardware partner engagement
3 Requires graphics option

System requirements

• QNX 6.3.2 or 6.4.0
• iPod USB direct connect, digital output available on 6.4.0 only
• Target systems include:
  
  • X86, PPC, SH4, ARM
    
  • Pre-integrated hardware solutions available for TI Jacinto
    

If a technology, device or codec you need is not listed, please contact us immediately for more information.