Using mmcli instead of other components

The mmcli utility helps you to learn the APIs of multimedia libraries and services and to test their functions without having to integrate these components into your media apps.

With mmcli, you can start learning and using multimedia components before you begin writing apps that will use them. This learning activity can help you design media apps and implement operations within them.

When to use mmcli

You should use mmcli if you want to:
  • exercise the APIs of multimedia components in an interactive session
  • write and execute test scripts to assess the functionality and performance of multimedia components
  • log all media commands and their results so that you can review the command history and analyze any errors

When to use other components directly

You shouldn't use mmcli, but instead directly call the APIs of multimedia components if you want to:
  • write production-level media apps that don't depend on a helper utility to forward commands to platform services
  • optimize media operations by avoiding the mmcli overhead of parsing input text and logging errors
  • customize how you handle errors or events reported by a particular library or service