The multimedia input/output (MMIO) file services are an extension of the base OS/2 file services. Designed to be simple, fast, and flexible, MMIO functions enable an application to access and manipulate multimedia data files in a transparent manner.
Multimedia files contain a variety of media elements such as images, graphics, digital audio and video. These elements can be in different file formats: for example, RIFF, M-Motion, and AVI. Multimedia files can also be stored as memory files, elements of a compound file storage system, or as DOS files. MMIO provides a consistent programming interface so that an application can refer to these files, read and write data to the files, and query the contents of the files, while remaining independent of the underlying file formats or the storage systems that contain the files. In addition, MMIO now enables compressors and decompressors (CODEC procedures) to operate on data objects. See CODEC Procedures for more a more detailed description of CODEC procedures.