David.R.Gilson

Software Review: Miro 2.0

Feb 23

Reviews David 3 Comments
audio, firefox3, floss, free, HD, library, miro, open source, OPML, podcast, RSS, video

About time I paid my dues to one of my favourite computer applications, besides my web browser. Miro is a free and open source HD video player and it is also a podcast management system. This means that Miro will not only download all the video (and audio) you’ve subscribed to, but it will play it for you too.

I have been using Miro for almost a year now. In fact, I gave it some small coverage on the CNET UK Forums, although I forget which version number it was back then. However, I am pleased to say that the major niggles I had with it back then have now been fixed with the 2.0 version. Not least, the ability to skip back and forth within a Adobe Flash video files (.flv), the VLC project has recently overcome the same hurdle.

Before I continue, I am going to let the Miro people tell you in their own words what this is all about:

The new user interface is a big improvement. The Windows version of the 1.x branch had a sexy-black design, which I miss, although it is more than made up by the increased responsiveness. Also, Miro used to be a terrible memory hog, not anymore, the application loads up in a small amount of time and I no longer feel as if I’m going to have the perform the Heimlich Maneuver on my laptop!

Another nice new feature is that the video pane will detach from the main Window so that you can still browse within Miro while playing a video. This was something of a problem before verison 2.0, as I did sometimes wish I could do other things in Miro while I had a video playing in the background.

Miro is based on the same core of code that the Firefox web browser is (that core of code is known as “Gecko“), which enables one of Miro’s nicest features, the Miro Guide, to appear within the application itself. This is the easiest way to browse content and subscribe. If you want to subscribe to things the old-school way, you will go to the web site of the show you want to follow, get it’s RSS feed copied to your clipboard, then go to Miro and hit Ctrl-N where it will pick up the URL you have in the clipboard. So yes, Miro Guide is good. However, there is an alternative method if you use Firefox 3. Firefox 3 has “Podcast detection“, which means that when you click on the RSS feed of something Firefox can recognise as a podcast, it will not only ask you if you want to subscribe to the feed, but also ask you if you want to choose a podcasting application. Well, if you use Miro, you select it. From then on, whenever you click on a podcast’s RSS feed Firefox will automatically enter the feed into your Mrio subscriptions, nothing more for you to do!

Also, another nice little feature for content creators who can’t afford the bandwidth of serving their shows, is that Miro seamlessly supports the Bittorrent protocol. This means that you can subscribe to a feed that only serves out the .torrent file, then you’ll download your content from other people who are also downloading the same material. This helps content creators, and you don’t notice any difference in how you get your content.

As well as adding internet video to Miro, you can also tell it to watch folders on your hard drive so that you can watch content you already have saved. This combined with Miro’s search box, turns Miro into a pretty competent video library management application. It isn’t meant to do this, so there’s no metadata for videos you already have. Still though, as long as you use helpful file names, it’s almost as good.

Lots of talk about video, although Miro is just as happy getting audio podcasts and playing them. One of the listed “features” of Miro 2.0 was better audio podcast support. All I can actually see that they’ve done with this is create an “Audio Feeds” heading in the sidebar. Personally, I find this pretty useless, I prefer to organise my feeds within folders on the sidebar. So as you’ll see from my screen shots, I already had a folder for audio feeds. However, while you can just about use Miro as a video library manager, it is by no means an audio jukebox, I would not recommend Miro for handling your music collection. For that I would recommend another Gecko based free and open source application, Songbird.

For me, Miro is the centre of my multimedia life. Most of the content Miro downloads for me, I watch on my mobile phone. Although, since I let Miro take care of the downloading, I just have a batch script which synchronises Miro’s downloads with my phone’s memory card.

Talking of my mobile phone, I also use the Nokia Podcasting application, which can import feeds from OPML files. Well, another benefit of Miro being free and open source, is that it works on open standards like, OPML, which it can import and export. This means that whenever my phone and I are going to be away from my computer and I want to download podcasts directly, I can simply export my feeds from Miro, and put that file on my phone. Being able to import and export OPML files also helps you if you’re setting up a new computer or Operating System (OS), and you want to carry across your feeds to your new installation of Miro. Simply export on the old computer/OS, and import on the new computer/OS.

Phew, I’ve said all I have to say. I seriously recommend Miro to everyone. Television is moving to the internet, and scheduled broadcasting is being replaced by content on demand. Miro is a great way to find lots of fantastic and expertly made content away from all the mainstream networks and corporations.

Just to finish off, I thought I’d include another review of Miro, this time in video, by @ChirsLAS:

Related links

For another review, @Rarst has just written a new first impressions review on his blog.