Planet Miro

If you are already enjoying all the enhancements for device syncing and music support that we brought to you in Miro 4, then just wait until you get your music on Miro 5.

The latest release of Miro will allow you to clean up your music collection by changing titles like Track 01 to their real title with a single click! Unknown Artists are replaced with the actual name.  Browsing your collection is vibrant and organized in the new Album/Artist view.

If you are tired of listening to the same old tracks on your device, it’s time to freshen it all up with Miro 5.

We’ve added eMusic to the Stores section, so you can sample and buy, and keep it all organized in your Miro music library.

There are new options added to device syncing.   You can sync automatically when you connect your device.  Choose to have Miro fill a percentage of your available space with an assortment of music and podcasts based your preferences with the new Auto Fill option.

And don’t forget the conversions. We have updated to the latest and greatest from ffmpeg to convert any media file to apple, android, KindleFire and web-friendly formats.

If you love your internet video, on Miro, it has just gotten better.  We’ve added support for HD downloads from Vimeo. We’ve upgraded libtorrent.  On Windows, we have updated everything on the backend, bringing a cleaner UI, better browsing, and clearer, sharper playback.

Along with the new release, we’ve moved Miro’s Support and Forums to a new platform to help us help you, and to assist you in helping yourselves and others. Have a question, or maybe some answers? Join in to discuss Miro here.

Miro 5 is the media player you need to share with your friends.  If you haven’t tried it yet, what are you waiting for?

Get Miro!

Miro Community’s servers have been upgraded to use version 1.8.2 of the code, which:

• Corrects a feed caching bug.
• Fixes search feeds.
• Syncs the front page and the popular videos page.
• Speeds up feed imports.

… and more! This is the last micro release for 1.8; the next release, 1.9, is planned for mid-May. The main noticeable change here will be a new default theme. It’s still being developed, but we already love it and can’t wait to get it out to all of you!

We’ll be doing some maintenance on the servers, as well as upgrading sites to the newly released Miro Community 1.8.2.  Expected downtime is approximately 2 hours.

This weekend we’re getting intellectually proper with a whole slew of amazing people in the info activism community. This year has sold out, which is both great news for some and unfortunate for others. However, there’s still time to ask reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian some questions.

 

Miro 5 Release Candidate 2 builds are posted.  Try it out and clean up your music library!

Download here:

• Windows (5.0-rc2)
• OS X (5.0-rc2)
• Source (5.0-rc2)

Thanks to all the users who downloaded release candidate 1 and provided feedback.  We’ve fixed up the bugs that you found and few more that we found, and we are ready for you to check out RC2.

One of the great new features coming in Miro 5 is the ability to look up song information and album art.  Here’s a blog post that explains how it all works.  We encourage everyone to try it out and let us know how it goes.

You can also help with testing and translations.

• Test this release. See the detailed instructions on the miro testing blog post.
• To help translate, see the translation guide.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped us get this far!

Automatic Song and Album Art lookup

New in the upcoming version 5.0, Miro can look up missing music information and album art. The song information is retreived from the Echonest database and the album art comes from 7Digital.

Setup after upgrading from earlier versions of Miro

If Miro is upgraded from a version earlier than Miro 5.0. The first time the Music tab is clicked, a dialog asks to use the song info look up.

New User Configuration

When installing Miro for the first time: an option to turn on look up is provided in the Music Settings screen of the first time start up dialog.

Turning on / off Lookup from the Preferences Panel

The Preferences Panel General tab controls turning metadata look up on and off for all audio files or for newly added music files.

To run look up for all audio files:

Click Run Online Lookup for All Current Music 

To remove look up data from the item metadata display

Click Remove All Lookup Data 

To look up information for all newly added items:

Check Automatically run online lookup for any new audio files that I add to Miro 

Toggling on and off from the File Menu

To toggle the use of Echonest data for one or a few items:

1. Select the item or items
2. Open the File menu
3. Choose (Don’t) Use album art and song info from online lookup database (Echonest)

Toggling on and off from the Context Menu

To toggle the use of echonest data for one or a few items:

1. Select the item or items
2. Open the context menu
3. Choose (Don’t) Use album art and song info from online lookup database (Echonest)

Over the past few months, we’ve been growing very fast. It’s been exciting: more videos, more subtitles, more volunteers. We’ve been seeing an increase in remarkable viral moments, like the (controversial) KONY 2012 video being translated into 37 languages on our platform in less than a week.

And we’re hearing from more and more video publishers that want to launch volunteer communities, as PBS Newshour recently did (you can join their team here!).

For a few important reasons, ‘Universal Subtitles’ is no longer the best name for us. As our community grows and our platform expands, we need a name that’s less specific (what if someday we add functionality that’s not just for subtitles?) and that really captures the sense of community that we’re hoping to build– as a non-profit with a social mission, we are certainly not a typical web startup. Changing a name is hard, but we’ve found a new name that feels right.

And that new name… is Amara. The word ‘Amara’ means several things– it’s a form of the Spanish verb amar, ‘to love’ and it means ‘eternal’ in Sanskrit. We like these meanings and others.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be making the biggest announcements we’ve ever had, and with those, what started as Universal Subtitles will be transitioning to the name Amara. Our URL won’t change at first — it’s a big project that we want to undertake carefully — but ‘Amara’ will start to replace ‘Universal Subtitles’ throughout our site and in our announcements.

We’re encouraged by the community developing around Amara. If you’re excited by the idea of making video accessible to those who are hard of hearing and to audiences around the world in any language, just add a video URL to start subtitling or translating now.

Our friends at Kaltura are offering free admission to Kaltura’s DevConnect 2012 event. Read on for more…

With online video revolutionizing so many aspects of our lives, improving the ways we communicate, educate, collaborate and even buy and sell, this the right time to get up to speed with what’s possible using today’s technology and help shape the technology of tomorrow, making video higher quality, faster to stream and easier to create. Join us this year at DevConnect, a full-day conference taking place in NYC in April 2nd , bringing together web & mobile developers, video experts and content makers who care about the future of web video. This year, we have a great line-up of speakers featuring luminaries from Disney, Avid, Internet Broadcasting, Cognizant, Remote Learner, Paypal, eBay, Sencha and more.

• Join Avid‘s Ron Wallace and Bob Craig will share a new approach to making News and real-time publishing in their session – Bridging Television News and Web Production.
• And Luca Candela, Sencha’s product manager for Sencha Tools, as he will take you through a fascinating “hands-on” session on developing Rich Video Applications for mobile devices and tablets: From zero to tablet in 45 minutes: how to develop a video gallery with Sencha Touch.
• Tom Ortega, will uncover how Local News and “Citizen Journalism” in the era of freely accessible Web Video is made easily achievable in Tom Ortega’s talk: Video Journalism for the People: Empowering the Average Joe to Take on the Mass Media.
• Producer and Director David Kronmiller will share an in-depth walk-through of the history of Video Encoding and discuss everything from how to encode to the web to nits and grits of Web Video Encoding – From Source To Stream: Demystifying Video In The Digital Era.

Join us in these insightful sessions and many more sessions and hands-on workshops, shaping the future of online video – Check out the agenda at: http://devconnect.kaltura.org/agenda

The first 25 readers to register get a FREE ticket!
http://devconnect2012.eventbrite.com/?discount=OVAFREE

And if you’re too late, we have a special $100 discount for OVA friends at:
http://devconnect2012.eventbrite.com/?discount=OVAMEM

Miro 5 Release Candidate builds are posted…

Download here:

• Windows (5.0-rc1)
• OS X (5.0-rc1)
• Source (5.0-rc1)

…And we need your help!

Test this release. See the detailed instructions on the miro testing blog post.

To help translate, see the translation guide.

There are some awesome improvements in this release.

1. Song information and Album art lookup

Clean up your music collection by automatically looking up
the Artist, correct title, and album name and artwork among other thing.

2. Album View

A clean view to group together all your songs by Album and Artist.  Also a simplified way to view video items by kind (Movies, Clips, Podcasts…)

3. Faster Device Syncing and Conversions

We’ve added a Quick fill option to get your music onto your device fast!  Automatic syncing,  options to convert only when necessary, and updates to the ffmpeg binaries.

4. eMusic in the Stores section

Purchase music from eMusic and add it straight to your library.

5. Download HD videos from Vimeo feeds

When available, you can now download HD quality videos from Vimeo podcasts.

6. Massive updates to the Windows backend

From playback to gui display to libtorrent, everything is updated and upgraded.

 

Help us test Miro 5, Release Candidate builds

You can download them here:

• Windows (5.0-rc1)
• OS X (5.0-rc1)
• Source (5.0-rc1)

To run the regression tests

1. Go to litmus.pculture.org and sign in or create an account if you don’t already have one.
2. Select the recommended test run for Miro 5.0 Beta and RC Testing
3. Select your OS configuration and start running tests from the groups that are listed.
4. For each test that you run, please mark it pass / fail / unclear. Don’t worry if you can’t run all the tests.
5. If you encounter an error, please file a bug and provide the bug number in the results and a quick description in the comments.

Bugzilla information (Fixed / Open / Create)

• Miro 5.0 Fixed bugs
• Miro 5.0 – all bugs open and closed
• Submit a new bug

Extra info

• Please read Good Bug Reports for bug guidelines
• If you are new to testing you can check out our getting started guide
• If your time is limited, doing the 10 short tests in the Quicktest will be immensely helpful.
• Track the testing progress

TheMiroFolks: Ushahidi just launched a new video site with Miro Community! http://t.co/ibAPEOMS

Guest post by Timothy Vollmer, Creative Commons

Khan Academy has been killing it. The popular video education website now contains over 3,000 educational videos, with topics ranging from basic algebra to 17th century baroque painting. The Khan Academy videos are made available on their website under an open license which allows users to not only view the videos, but also incorporate the video in their websites and remix the videos for their customized educational needs. Khan has delivered almost 130 million of these video lessons to hungry learners online. The Khan Academy videos are Open Educational Resources–OER for short.

Open Educational Resources are free to use and always permit users to engage in the “4Rs”: they can revise, reuse, remix, and redistribute the OER. Online, these automatic permissions are super useful because they save teachers, students, and self learners the time, money, and effort of having to track down the owner and ask their permission to use the learning resource. Open Educational Resources have been around now for over 10 years. You may have heard of some big OER projects such as MIT OpenCourseWare or CK-12 open textbooks. Most Open Educational Resources are licensed under Creative Commons licenses.

The problem with OER is that not that many people know about them. So, Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Institute have teamed up to host the Why Open Education Matters video competition. We want people to create short videos that explains the benefits and promise of Open Educational Resources for teachers, students and schools everywhere. Even U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is a champion of OER, and recorded a short video that introduces the contest. The first prize winner will be awarded $25,000, and we’ve lined up some great judges, including Nina Paley, Davis Guggenheim, and James Franco. Please jump in and share your creative video-making skills to explain and promote OER.

Submissions are due by June 5, 2012 on http://whyopenedmatters.org. We’re eating our own dog food too–any video that is submitted must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license so that it can be freely used and shared by anyone to help explain Open Educational Resources. Roll camera!

TheMiroFolks: @G_GabeLopes want to send us some specific suggestions of where it could be better on windows? nicholas@pculture.org

TheMiroFolks: RT @nreville: Universal Subtitles is hiring a customer support / documentation specialist! http://t.co/hQ5462BC

TheMiroFolks: RT @SemanticVision: What a handy little web video conversion tool #Miro is. Open Source too, lovely! http…

Our search backend crashed, resulting in errors on some sites/pages.  We’re recovering the indexes now and will respond here when service is fully restored.

Update: service to all sites should be restored.

Service has been restored to all miro sites.

Due to server issues, all mirocommunity sites are down temporarily. We’ll let you know when service is restored.

We have moved to a new search engine to resolve issues with sorting on listing pages and to resolve some intermittent server errors on search index access. While we reindex your site content, there will be a period when the listing pages are blank. This will resolve itself.

Although things were resolved on the code end, it turned out there were some server configuration issues preventing feed updates. These have been corrected and the backlog of imported videos is currently running.

We are happy to announce that the issues with feed imports have been resolved; you should see any feeds that you have added recently start importing videos in the coming hours.

The good news? The outages have subsided.

The bad news? We are having some issues with feeds not updating.

The good news? We know about it and are working to correct it. :-) We’ll post here when we do.

Following the 1.8 upgrade, we have been experiencing intermittent outages due to unexpected server loads. We are working to correct the issue.

TheMiroFolks: RT @nreville: We're hiring a European Business Development Director for Universal Subtitles http://ur1.ca…

The update to 1.8 is complete! You may notice that certain video listing pages are blank; this is a temporary situation caused by some changes made in this upgrade; it will resolve itself. If you are still experiencing this issue in a day or so, let us know at support[at]mirocommunity.org.

What’s new in this release?

The biggest change that you’ll see is that adding feeds in the admin is now asynchronous. You will be able to add a feed, then continue working in the admin while the feed imports in the backend. This release also resolves issues with long-running feeds timing out, piling up, or blocking the progress of other feeds.

There have also been a number of non-user-facing improvements, especially related to making it easier for interested developers and community members to contribute to Miro Community. If you want to learn more, you can check out the code on github.

What’s coming in the next release?

We’re planning (and have been working on) a major overhaul of the admin to provide a smoother, cleaner user experience. Though these changes were originally slated for this release, we’ve pushed it back so that we can give you the feed import improvements sooner and so that we can focus on really polishing every angle of the admin improvements.

The next release will also feature an overhaul of the default Miro Community theme, changes to how custom themes are made, and improved documentation of how to make a custom theme. The next release will maintain backwards-compatibility for current custom themes, but we are planning to deprecate some aspects of how custom themes are currently set up so that we can provide better theming options in the future. This deprecation will take place over multiple releases in order to allow sites with custom themes to adjust to the changes.

If you have any questions or comments, contact questions[at]mirocommunity.org. We look forward to continuing to improve the service that we provide!

Last week, the release was postponed due to a severe bug that showed up at the last minute. We were able to successfully correct that bug and a few others, and today released version 1.8 of Miro Community. We will be upgrading the hosted sites starting at 21:30 EST; again, we don’t expect any downtime, but we will update this blog if any surprises pop up.

Today we were very proud to launch the PBS NewsHour translation team, part of their Open Election 2012 project.

The first video we’re working on together is the State of the Union speech– help us translate it!

Translate the State of the Union Here

Later today we’ll be releasing Miro Community 1.8, and we’ll be upgrading the hosted sites starting at 21:30 EST.  We don’t expect any downtime, but we’ll update this blog if anything unexpected happens.

Update 1/24/2011 21:36: due to a last-minute bug, the release has been postponed.

TheMiroFolks: s@SymplyOS yes, please do!

TheMiroFolks: "The group behind the largest online protest in history is @fightfortheftr, which began in October." - SF…

Yesterday we joined the largest online protest in history, adding our site to hundreds of others that went dark in a statement against SOPA and PIPA. We blew up twitter from 106,500 mentions of the term “SOPA” to more than 3.5 million today (cool visual here). Politicians took notice, and even Orrin Hatch removed his co-sponsorship despite receiving almost $1.2 million from large media companies and pro-PIPA groups.

As you likely know by now, SOPA and PIPA attempt to combat piracy at the expense of massive changes to the way the web works. For a refresher on the problems SOPA and PIPA pose, check out these great multimedia explainers or this breakdown from the Washington Post. You can also read about the bills, including viewing their full text, on OpenCongress: SOPA and PIPA.

The blackout effort was designed to educate users about the power these bills have to completely shut down sites that may contain one problematic page or link among thousands. While public opinion has turned on this legislation and support for SOPA is waning, the fight is far from over. The PROTECT IP Act, a.k.a. PIPA, is still up for a Senate floor vote on January 24. Though SOPA itself may be shelved for the time being, we’re likely to see it, or perhaps a more palatable form of the same problematic legislation, reappear in the future.

That’s why we need to keep up debate and discussion of the underlying issues driving SOPA. While some assert that lawmakers and content creators simply don’t understand the way the internet works, it’s also arguable that supporters of this bill do understand what they are potentially creating: a “consumption-only internet” that “locks down this emerging ecosystem” of openly available, user-driven content. Maplight offers a breakdown and infographic demonstrating the disproportionate financial support coming from the entertainment industry compared to funds from Silicon Valley opposing the bill. These purveyors of traditional forms of content and content delivery have yet to comment on changing public opinion towards SOPA, with MPAA CEO Chris Dodd instead opting to bizarrely slam blackouts that simulate the potential outcome of a censored internet as “abuse[s] of power.”

The Open Video Alliance seeks to support free expression over heavy-handed copyright regimes that trump creativity and shared cultural resources. At the time of last year’s Open Video Conference, tech entrepreneurs and activists were just beginning to respond to PIPA. Meanwhile, we covered topics at the conference like alternative copyright education (session notes here) and defensive patent licensing (session notes here) — constructive alternatives to protecting creative work that keep the web open for makers of all kinds.

Check back over the days to come for more information and statements from Open Video Alliance members on SOPA and PIPA. Join us in the comments and on Twitter with your thoughts on this legislation and suggestions for action.

TheMiroFolks: getmiro.com is striking against SOPA - so proud of our friends at Fight for the Future today! go team! http://t.co/uidTGdSx

TheMiroFolks: RT @MitchellMcKenna: @dragojevic I see Vimeo feeds now work again in Miro 4.0.4! Awesome work, big kudos to @TheMiroFolks!

2012-01-10T19:35:26Z: z3p: deardiary: Vimeo, you're breaking my heart

TheMiroFolks: RT @_athome_: I just donated to help #Miro, you can too at http://t.co/v6bBoEjs via @themirofolks

TheMiroFolks: Miro / PCF is looking for a Lead Designer! http://t.co/XlnSu6i Know anyone wonderful?

TheMiroFolks: @the1joshuab It's not in our program at the moment, but I have just filed a ticket. You can follow the pr…

TheMiroFolks: @grizzo94 Thanks for the feedback. If you're experiencing a bug, you can report it at http://ht.ly/5J4FU

TheMiroFolks: all Miro domains are moving off of godaddy, because of their SOPA support. http://t.co/rYCoJ4tm #SOPA #PIPA

TheMiroFolks: @davidmead Thanks for using Miro!

TheMiroFolks: Interested in working for Universal Subtitles? We're hiring a South & Central American Regional Coordinat…

TheMiroFolks: @spherecat1 Let us know if you have any more questions. Thanks for the feedback!

TheMiroFolks: We are hiring in Malaysia or the Philippines for a Video Lingua Coordinator - http://t.co/L6usPGID - please pass along!

TheMiroFolks: updated Miro for OSX Lion is coming in the next few days...

TheMiroFolks: We are hiring a Lead Designer for Miro / PCF, come make beautiful open software with us! http://t.co/yKzggj7 (plz RT!)

TheMiroFolks: RT @OpenCongress: Pleased to announce the launch of OpenCongress v.3 -- now the easiest way to organize a…

TheMiroFolks: RT @universalsubs: #UniversalSubtitles accepted the FCC Chairman's Accessibility Award this morning! (20:…

TheMiroFolks: @valeryan24 thanks for updating the french translation, we will sync soon!

TheMiroFolks: Gigaom: sync your own videos to the Kindle Fire with Miro http://t.co/qAr6Jagq

TheMiroFolks: @_athome_ Thanks! It's actually a known issue, so follow this link to check out solutions: http://ht.ly/5EJmo

TheMiroFolks: Our intern, Emily S., left the nest this week. She's been a great addition to the PCF team and we wish he…

TheMiroFolks: We need help translating getmiro.com on launchpad! http://t.co/IKJmCTjh

TheMiroFolks: convert and sync videos to Kindle Fire with the newest version of Miro! http://t.co/WDMkGT8V

TheMiroFolks: Miro is giving away free Flattr gift cards to the first 1,000 people who sign up! http://t.co/6USemrmU

TheMiroFolks: @curiousjohn haha, yes.... that was a test of attention to detail!!

2011-12-29T18:52:20Z: z3p: deardiary: Ubuntu packages of 4.0.4 are now in the miro-releases PPA: https://launchpad.net/~pcf/+archive/miro-releases

we also put together this simple site explaining how it works: Sync Video and Audio to Kindle Fire

Universal Subtitles is a collaborative and award-winning platform for subtitling and translating online video. We’ve created an elegant subtitling tool that you can embed into any webpage, for almost any video. And we’re building an online community to subtitle and translate the world’s most popular and significant videos.

We’re looking for a web developer who is either (or both):

1) An experienced Django developer (preferred) or…

2) An experienced developer of web applications with strong fundamentals and a track record of quickly learning new frameworks.

If you’re awesome and you’re excited about our project, we want to talk to you. Though the need we have right now is for someone who can rapidly build user facing features on our subtitle collaboration site, and we think knowing Django inside out will help.

The project is free and open source, available under the AGPL license, and our organization is a 501(c)3 non-profit. Our supporters include Mozilla and the MacArthur Foundation. And our tool has been used by the New York Times in their Egypt coverage and by Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) in their ongoing effort to translate their award-winning educational videos.

This is an ideal gig for someone who wants to build software to create social change. You’ll be building features to help an active and growing community do world changing work, as well as a a free, open source JavaScript/HTML5 widget that can go head to head with any competing Flash, iOS, or desktop subtitling app.

Things that make you an even stronger candidate, from our point of view:

* Ability to make reasonable UI/UX decisions on the fly as you code
* Good communication skills for working with developers in other organizations (partners, clients)
* Project management experience

To apply, send a resume (txt or rtf) to jobs@pculture.org

We need your help to keep Miro alive. To those of you that have already donated this year– thank you so much. If you haven’t given yet, here’s why it’s urgent.

Over the past year, PCF, the non-profit that makes Miro, has had some big successes. We’ve won a Tech Award for advancing equality and an award from the FCC for innovation in accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing. Miro has taken huge strides forward, adding full music support, Android syncing, and much more– Miro is now used by millions of people every month!

We believe deeply in the power of open tools. But our very small budget depends on donations from users and we are facing serious shortfall going into 2012. Can you make a donation?

Yes, I can donate to Miro

After you give, you’ll see a list of new features that we are considering: please vote on what you’d most like to see in the next version of Miro.

We are already hard at work on a major update to Miro that will bring exciting new features and major performance improvements. Miro is built by one of the smallest software teams in the world for a project of this scale, just a few very underpaid developers. But even with our tiny (and incredibly talented team), it does take some money to build and offer Miro for free to everyone.

Our request this month is very real– we just can’t afford to keep making Miro without more user support. If you can make a donation of any size today, it will help ensure that Miro can live on into next year and beyond.

Donate Here

Thank you for reading and, as always, for using Miro. And please, if you possibly can, make a donation today.

I almost can’t believe it, but Universal Subtitles has won three separate awards in the past 4 months! I am just so proud of our team, especially since some of the best stuff that we’re working on hasn’t even been released yet (January is going to be very exciting).

I’m also very pleased that each award honors Universal Subtitles for slightly different reasons — equality, accessibility, and intercultural innovation. It speaks to our hope that by making subtitling common instead of rare, we will all benefit, each in different ways.

 

2011 Tech Award for Advancing Equality

 

FCC Award for Advancement in Accessibility

 

Intercultural Innovation Award