The Khronos Group today announced the first beta release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) for OpenML 1.0. OpenML is an API for capturing, processing, synchronizing, and playing digital media content that, if widely adopted, would enable digital content authoring application developers to easily integrate video, audio and graphics capabilities into their application suites, and also makes these… applications portable over multiple operating systems, CPU architectures and add-in hardware devices.

The OpenML SDK Beta1 release, available from Khronos for both the Windows and Linux platforms, complements the OpenML SDK already available from SGI for the IRIX platform. Khronos is working towards a final release of the OpenML 1.0 SDK for Windows, Linux, and IRIX in the spring of 2004.

Khronos says the OpenML 1.0 SDK Beta1 delivers the media library (ML) and the display control (mlDC) components of the OpenML specification, and enables full functionality for configuring and controlling video/audio device input, output and processing, and for setting up and controlling channels in display screens.

The Khronos Group, an industry consortium founded in Jan., 2000 by SGI and others, believes that the OpenML standard is key to enabling growth in the digital media authoring, playback, and streaming markets. OpenML enables multimedia authoring application developers to efficiently develop and deploy cross-platform applications that interoperate with a wide selection of systems and peripherals. It enables hardware vendors to leverage the efforts of a larger base of application developers. And, it offers end-users increased functionality across a wider range of platforms at cheaper prices.

Additionally, OpenML enables media processing components from many manufacturers to be flexibly mixed and matched to increase end-user flexibility while reducing platform costs.

The OpenML Beta SDK can be downloaded, free-of-charge from the Khronos.org Website. The beta release follows an alpha release at the SIGGRAPH trade show on July 29, 2003, which generated strong interest with over 5,000 downloads.

Additionally, Khronos will soon release details of its OpenML 1.0 Adopters Program designed to provide interested companies with access to the source code for OpenML Conformance Tests and the final OpenML SDK.

 
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