Developer(s) | Participatory Culture Foundation |
---|---|
Initial release | 21 February 2006 |
Final release | |
Repository | github |
Written in | Python using GTK+ |
Operating system | Windows, macOS, Linux |
Size |
|
Available in | 40 languages [2] |
Type | Media player Internet television RSS+BitTorrent |
License | GPL-2.0-or-later |
Website | getmiro |
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]
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]
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.
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]
Shorten (SHN) is a file format used for compressing audio data. It is a form of data compression of files and is used to losslessly compress CD-quality audio files. Shorten is no longer developed and other lossless audio codecs such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio (APE), TTA, and WavPack (WV) have become more popular. It is still in use to trade concert recordings that are already encoded as Shorten files. Shorten files use the .shn file extension.
Monkey's Audio is an algorithm and file format for lossless audio data compression. Lossless data compression does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, Vorbis, and Opus. Therefore, it may be decompressed to a file that is identical to the source material.
FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg
tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects and standards compliance.
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VLC media player is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.
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The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.
CNET Download is an Internet download directory website launched in 1996 as a part of CNET. Initially it resided on the domain download.com, and then download.com.com for a while, and is now download.cnet.com. The domain download.com attracted at least 113 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.
A multimedia framework is a software framework that handles media on a computer and through a network. A good multimedia framework offers an intuitive API and a modular architecture to easily add support for new audio, video and container formats and transmission protocols. It is meant to be used by applications such as media players and audio or video editors, but can also be used to build videoconferencing applications, media converters and other multimedia tools. Data is processed among modules automatically, it is unnecessary for app to pass buffers between connected modules one by one.
The Mozilla application framework is a collection of cross-platform software components that make up the Mozilla applications. It was originally known as XPFE, an abbreviation of cross-platform front end. It was also known as XPToolkit. To avoid confusion, it is now referred to as the Mozilla application framework.
The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement."
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Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Recorder (SUPER) is a closed-source adware front end for open-source software video players and encoders provided by the FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, ffmpeg2theora, musepack, Monkey's Audio, True Audio, WavPack, libavcodec, and the Theora/Vorbis RealProducer plugIn projects. It was first released in 2005. SUPER provides a graphical user interface to these back-end programs, which use a command-line interface.
This is a comparison of notable YouTube download and conversion software. YouTube conversion software is used to download and convert YouTube videos to popular formats or portable devices.
Citrio is an adware web browser developed by Catalina Group Ltd. and distributed by Epom Ad Server. Citrio is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Citrio has a download manager that includes Bittorrent support, a video downloader, a media player and a proxy switcher. Citrio is based on the open source Chromium web browser project, which makes it compatible with all extensions, apps and themes from Chrome Web Store.
Although we are no longer developing Miro, we do continue to make the media player available.
...the software code, which is licensed under the GPL.
I have seen the future of television and it's an application called called Miro.