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Miro (video software)

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Miro
Developer(s)Participatory Culture Foundation
Initial release21 February 2006; 18 years ago (2006-02-21)
Final release
6.0[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 5 April 2013; 11 years ago (5 April 2013)
Repositorygithub.com/pculture/miro
Written inPython using GTK+
Operating systemWindows, macOS, Linux
Size
  • Windows: 28.50 MB
  • macOS: 15.28 MB
  • Linux: 2.0 MB
  • Source code: 9.28 MB
Available in40 languages[2]
TypeMedia player
Internet television
RSS+BitTorrent
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later
Websitegetmiro.com

Miro (formerly named Democracy Player or DTV)[3] was an audio, video player and Internet television application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and Linux and supports most known video file formats. It offers both audio and video, some in HD quality.

The Participatory Culture Foundation no longer develops Miro.[4] The last version (6.0) was released in 2013 and is no longer functioning correctly because of changes to the YouTube API.[citation needed]

Miro is free software, released under the terms of the GPL-2.0-or-later.[5]

Features

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Miro can automatically download videos from RSS-based "channels", manage them and play them. The application is designed to mesh with other Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) products such as Video Bomb, a social tagging video website, and the Channel Channel, a TV guide for Internet television.

Miro integrates an RSS news aggregator and podcatcher, a BitTorrent client (based on libtorrent), and a media player (VLC media player under Windows, QuickTime under macOS, and xine media player or GStreamer under Linux and FreeBSD). Since 2.0, Miro supports the adding of website bookmarks under the "Sites" category; by default, ClearBits.net is preloaded in Miro as a bookmark.

Examples of supported video files are QuickTime, Windows Media Video (WMV), MPEG, Audio Video Interleave (AVI), XVID as a video player. It also supports RSS BitTorrent. When a new video is available, the program will notify and download if possible.

The Miro Video Converter converts video formats.[6] It is based on FFmpeg with profiles for the Theora (.ogv), .mp4, and WebM video formats supported by various devices.[7]

A developer of Miro wrote that the Windows installer installs proprietary commercial software such as browser add-ons, also known as crapware,[8][improper synthesis?] stating "This is one of the primary ways we fund continued Miro development."[9]

History

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The application was first launched in 2005 as Democracy Player (sometimes abbreviated as DTV) and later on as Miro in 2007. Video searching of web-based video archives was included in 2007, with access to various archives changing over time.

Miro is mostly written in Python, although it links to various libraries written in a variety of languages. Versions through 2.x had an almost entirely HTML/CSS based UI. Miro uses embedded WebKit in a GTK window on Unix/Linux (Mozilla Gecko/XUL until 3.0.2), WebKit in a Cocoa window on macOS, and Mozilla in a XUL window on Windows. Since version 3.0, the macOS port uses Cocoa and others use GTK. The embedded web browser is used only for web pages.

Reception

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Miro received a favorable review from Josh Quittner who wrote "I have seen the future of television and it’s an application called Miro."[10] In May 2011, Seth Rosenblatt of CNET wrote, "Providing one-stop shopping for all your video and audio management desires, open-source and cross-platform Miro deserves much of the praise that's been heaped upon it."[11] The Softonic review gave the software a score of 9/10, and described the software as "a perfect example of how video content from different sources can be integrated into one single application and served directly to your PC in a fast, easy and elegant way."[12]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Release 6.0". 5 April 2013. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  2. ^ "Openness: translations". Participatory Culture Foundation.
  3. ^ Nicholas Reville (12 March 2007). "A Name Change". Archived from the original on 21 April 2012. Retrieved 3 September 2007.; Nicholas Reville (17 July 2007). "Announcing Miro". Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 3 September 2007.
  4. ^ "PCF Projects". Participatory Culture Foundation. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 14 December 2018. Although we are no longer developing Miro, we do continue to make the media player available.
  5. ^ "Get Miro download page". ...the software code, which is licensed under the GPL.
  6. ^ Miro Video Converter
  7. ^ "Miro Video Converter FFMPEG Conversion Matrix". Participatory Culture Foundation. 8 April 2011. Archived from the original on 20 December 2012. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  8. ^ "Crapware is software that is bundled with a new PC or other software package that the user is not fully aware that they are installing". about.com. Archived from the original on 19 May 2014. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
  9. ^ "Bug 15208 – Miro setup closes and restarts Firefox without notification". Bugzilla. 14 November 2010. Archived from the original on 1 September 2013.
  10. ^ Quittner, Josh (13 November 2007). "The future of Internet TV". TechLand blog. CNN. Archived from the original on 3 October 2011. Retrieved 27 October 2011. I have seen the future of television and it's an application called called Miro.
  11. ^ Rosenblatt, Seth (25 May 2011). "Miro – CNET Editors' review". CNET. Archived from the original on 18 October 2011. Retrieved 27 October 2011.
  12. ^ Santos, Elena (25 July 2011). "Watch internet videos like you watch TV". Softonic. Retrieved 27 October 2011.
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