Expanding our series of mobile development tutorials is the new "Formatting media for OTA streaming and download" tutorial authored by Ian Simpson, a magazine journalist and freelance technology writer based in the UK. He also wrote the "Formatting audio for local playback" and "Formatting video for local playback" tutorials for Sony Ericsson Developer World.

Download tutorial here>>

This tutorial starts by introducing digital multimedia, continues by outlining how this applies to Sony Ericsson mobile phones with recommended audio and video parameters and then guides developers through two examples to try. Here's an overview:

Background information
Digital multimedia generally consists of one or two major elements; a video track and/or an audio track. These tracks or components of the digital media are termed data streams. Typically video media contains one data stream for video and another for audio. Audio media usually contains a single data stream. Within this introductory section, Ian Simpson also explains resolution, compression, containers and TCP/IP networking factors such as addresses, ports, packets and network address translation. He also presents a useful OTA data connection overview covering GPRS, EDGE and UMTS networks.

Formatting for Sony Ericsson phones
Making things more relevant to Sony Ericsson mobile phones, the next section presents specific details and recommendations for creating media content for Sony Ericsson mobile phones that can be delivered through mobile networks, both OTA and real-time streaming. The list of phones supporting these audio and video streaming parameters are presented in charts and include Java Platform 5 (JP-5) phones such as the K750 and W800, JP-6 phones including the W550 and W810 and the K800, W850, K610 and Z610 JP-7 phones. Sony Ericsson's P990, M600 and W950 UIQ 3-based phones are also included. Here Ian Simpson outlines the process for formatting multimedia video, presents content delivery methods and explains how to set up an RTSP test environment.

Example 1: authoring video media for OTA download and streaming
The first example to try is how to format a multimedia video for EDGE/UMTS network delivery on phones supporting the QCIF (176X144) visual resolution. The source multimedia video example is included in the downloadable tutorial zip-file. You are guided through which software is required and then how to:

• Create the video project
• Import source video and format track properties
• Export formatted video project
• Transcode streams to MPED-4/AAC in a 3GP file
• Transcode streams to H.264/AAC in a 3GP file

Example 2: authoring audio-only media for OTA download and streaming
The second example shows how to format uncompressed WAV audio and the source audio file is also included in the tutorial zip-file. After discussing software tools and setup, Ian Simpson guides you through how to normalize audio volume, encode to HE-AAC, insert a correct hint track for the audio stream and add metadata for artist and title information.

Other tutorials currently available include:

• Formatting audio for local playback>>
• Formatting video for local playback>>
• Getting started with Web Services, JSR 172>>
• Getting started with Web Services with UIQ 3 and gSOAP>>
• UIQ 3 tutorial series, Part 1: the UIQ Platform>>
• Getting started with On-device Debugging for NetBeans tutorial>>
• Getting started with Macromedia Flash Lite 1.1 for mobile applications in Sony Ericsson phones>>

If you have a suggestion for another tutorial subject area, please login and add your idea to the "Add comment" option at the end of this article.

More information:

• Download formatting media for OTA streaming and download tutorial>>
• "New formatting audio and video developer tutorials", September 2006 news article>>
• Mobile music application development resources>>