Miro 4, the open source music and video player, is released | Hacker News Reader

Miro 4, the open source music and video player, is released

getmiro.com

129 points16BitTons55 comments

I wish media player developers would stop trying to imitate iTunes. I hate iTunes. It's confusing (it's caused me to delete my entire music collection on my PC on multiple occasions), it's huge and demanding (of my focus/attention, and also computing resources) where it shouldn't be, and its integration with iTunes store is pointless and annoying to me (I don't shop at iTunes).

It's great that seemingly high quality cross-platform tools like this are being developed, though I wonder what this does that Songbird (the last big "iTunes replacement" I can think of) does not?

"It's confusing (it's caused me to delete my entire music collection on my PC on multiple occasions)"

What? Ummmm....even my super non-techie wife hasn't done that.

I'm Appletarded, and get confused by a lot of Apple software. I don't know how I did it, but it's happened on three separate occasions. Twice on a Windows PC and once on a Mac. Somehow my misunderstanding of the sync feature led to the PC getting what was on the iPod, and the music collection on the PC being deleted. It was many years ago; I eventually learned my lesson and stopped trying to use the damned thing. Maybe it's better/safer now. But, I'll never find out, as I can't think of any reason I'd have to use iTunes.

Syncing your iPod will never delete music from your PC. It is and has always been a one-way sync, PC to iPod, as far as music content is concerned.

Not quite true (music purchased on the iPod will be synced back) but near enough.

pedant face

Seems like that would be the way things would work, wouldn't it? Again, it's been many years since it happened. The precise details of what happened are a bit fuzzy at this point, as is often the case with very painful events in life. It may have merely "forgotten" where to find all the music and emptied the library. And, it may be that the actual file deletions happened on the iPod rather than the PC (I'm still pretty sure it deleted files on the PC, though). I remember being furious and confused by the behavior of the software...and I remember having to re-rip several albums that I hadn't backed up lately, and I lost a few mixtapes that someone had made for me.

That reminds me of another thing I hated about iTunes...it was always re-indexing its library. All the damned time. Every time I would start it, it would go galloping all over my PC (this was back in the days when I had three or four hard disks, plus a file server) for like 30 minutes.

Regardless of the specifics, iTunes made an enemy for life out of me by being so damned confusing, and so hostile to my existing workflow. I'd been using digital music for a decade before iTunes came along, and iTunes just did not fit into how I'd been using it.

No at one time you definitely could select the direction, and I did the same thing, deleting the collection on the PC.

Mine has!

Has happened to me on several occasions, especially with an older iPod shuffle. Synced in some music, then set everything I could find to "manually manage music" and "do not autosync". Moved the source files around on the PC, and the next time I connected the iPod, iTunes "helpfully" automatically wiped all the music off the iPod, since it could no longer find it in its library.

I've heard others getting burned in a similar fashion. One person needed to charge the iPod before a long flight, and didn't bother connecting the external drives containing all the music. Only after getting on the plane did he realize iTunes has "synced" his "empty library" and blown away everything on the iPod.

Back in the early days of iTunes, I bought an iPod Mini and synced it on a Windows machine. Occasionally, I would sync my iPod, and something like 20 songs would disappear (purchased and non-purchased). This happened without warning, with alarming frequency.

This was a known bug as late as iTunes 7, which would sometimes disregard the "Automatic Media Folder Management" setting, do it anyways, and sometimes files/folders.

I've done this before, but on Windows. There was a setting with an older version of iTunes on Windows where it would automatically manage your music, which means that it moves it around and takes ownership of it. If you try to delete something from your itunes library, that you thought you copied, it would actually delete your music, not the link between itunes and your music.

Happened to me as well. Many years ago I used Itunes and it wiped my collection off, since I was using automatic syncing. I guess this fixed it now, but I have moved away from iTunes since then.

I currently have two copies (pointing to the same file) of most of my music collection in iTunes. No idea how to fix it. It happened when I tried to import some MP3s from an old laptop that had some overlap.

I had that too.

Steps were from memory:

* Delete collection from iTunes.

* Change library location.

* Change library location back to original location.

* Wait 30+ minutes while iTunes freezes rescanning you library (I haven't used iTunes on Mac but on Windows it is a horrible experince, seriously haven't they heard of threads?).

Won't delete remove things from my hard disk?

Pretty sure it will only delete if it setup to manage your library.

its integration with iTunes store is pointless and annoying to me (I don't shop at iTunes)

The best thing about iTunes is its open DB: Anything can read or write to it. It's barely less elegant to shop at Amazon MP3 (or at least it was until they made the Cloud Player the intermediary stop for every purchase).

I know iTunes isn't very popular with HN readers, so I'll balance things out a bit and play devil's advocate for a while: I like iTunes quite a bit. There are certainly some minor gripes and irritations, particularly with the UI, but overall I'm satisfied with the performance of iTunes and wouldn't want to replace it without much careful thought.

I'm not a computer power user, more of a 'system dadmin'; we run iTunes in the house on about six (Mac) computers and half a dozen or so devices. iTunes runs happily on all the computers, ranging from an old original iMac from 2001 (which runs Tiger and iTunes 8 and acts as an internet radio and music 'terminal') to an eMac from 2005 running Leopard and iTunes 10) and various Snow Leopard machines and attached drives.

The different copies of iTunes copes with various libraries (the biggest one is 110GB) with apparent ease, and keeps track of the settings on various iPods, including a 60GB classic from 2005, two iPhones, three iPod Touches and a couple of Shuffles. It's easy to play music from other machines around the house - click on the computer's name and start listening to its music. It's also nice that when one of my children, say, buys an app for their iPhone on their iTunes Store account it appears automatically on mine too; similarly if I put music on mine it appears in their library, but of course you can be more selective in what you copy from family members' accounts and machines...

I love the power of iTunes playlists - those heavy duty database-query-like nested multiple smart playlists - and it's a great way to control what gets put onto your iPod while it charges and you sleep.

I also like: the automatic downloading of the latest podcasts and TV episodes; adding PDFs to my library puts them on my iPhone; broadcasting music around the house using iTunes DJ mode and Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil - controlling the music from any room using the Remote iPhone app (and sometimes letting people select music from their iOS devices); browsing the iTunes University and downloading lectures; tracking my App store spending with Wetfish Software's App Store Expense Monitor; writing new visualizers with Quartz Composer (which is cool if weird); ripping CDs with automatic track naming. I could go on.

OK, I'll accept that iTunes is a bizarre behemoth of an application, and has certainly outgrown its moniker. But, for day to day use, people like me find it a solid and reliable media and device 'engine' that doesn't require much thought or effort to use effectively.

But don't get me started on those stupid scrolling boxes within boxes...

Edit: when I started typing this, I was sure the title said 'Miro 4 ... iTunes replacement ...'. When I finished typing, it didn't. (I went off to work between those two times.) So I was thinking about whether Miro could replace more than 10% of iTunes' functionality. This comment seems less relevant now.

Yeah, I agree with you. iTunes has some stupid things and "wtf?" moments, but overall I do enjoy using it. It makes media consumption very easy.

Ok, so it's billed (here at least) as the "iTunes Replacement". And it advertises strongly "Converts and syncs to Android" (front and centre on the main page).

But I'm really unclear if it'll actually replace iTunes for my iPod Touch. It doesn't say anything about i devices that I can see (except for advertising an iPad app that doesn't seem to be available yet.)

So either; a) it doesn't sync my iOS devices in which case it may be a great media player, but it's not an iTunes replacement or b) They're hoping I'll take a huge amount for granted.

My guess is that the heading in Hacker News is the bit that's completely misleading and I do wish folk wouldn't editorialize the headline.

If it _is_ an iTunes replacement then a lot more info is needed - like will it sync my apps? Can I purchase new apps? and so on.

From their FAQ:

Can I sync my videos to an iPod or other video device?

Currently, Miro doesn't directly sync with any portable devices. However, we will be working on this in future versions. In the meantime, you may be able to sync the video files themselves with a separate program.

Yea, I felt the same, I only use iTunes today to sync with my iPod and this answer our question(http://www.getmiro.com/using-miro/faq/index.php#q3.7), it seems to download torrents though, "why" is my new question..

I used to use Miro, just to download torrents, about a year ago. My use case was to watch Ted Talks. You can search for RSS feeds from within it and once subscribed, select what items it downloads from within a feed. Once a video is watched, It'd be auto-deleted a week later, unless the user decides to keep it. It was actually pretty good. Eventually I ran out of hard disk space and decided to delete all the videos and uninstall Miro.

"Replacement" is a bit too tough a word.

It doesn't sync with (Apple) mobile devices, the primary reason I stick with iTunes.

It also seems more sluggish and bloated than iTunes on my MBP i7 running 10.6.

Seems like it was released way too prematurely. They could have spent more time building features & polish and utilized their launch hype much better.

Sorting through all the marketing fluff, what are the true advantages of Miro?

Horribly annoying that on their website, when I click play on a video then close the popup, the video keeps playing! I tried to view a few clips and they were all playing in the background. Had to re-open the video again and manually press the pause button to stop them.

Otherwise, it looks very similar to DoubleTwist but with the addition of syncing iOS devices. Wish it could drop some of the bloat (for example the torrent client) to make it more compelling. It is very tough though to make things more simplified.

I know everyone has their gripes with iTunes, but it is very tough to have an interface that is complex enough to combine local management of music, management of apps, music, and videos on a device, a store and still allow the user the power to make decisions about individual songs, etc.

I think Apple should diverge them and have the device syncing component as a separate program entirely, but tightly integrated so it can nab playlists, podcasts, etc. from iTunes.

I hear iTunes is horrible on Windows, but on Mac it's not too bad and I can't think of many ways they could really optimize it without stripping features that would piss off a lot of users.

It's not an iTunes replacement at all. I have an iPhone and buy apps through iTunes sometimes. This doesn't have that functionality (nor the syncing with the iPhone).

Also, it has a bittorrent client built in... Why?

So you can help out with bandwidth when downloading media (TED talks for example). Back when I used miro that was what I used it for at least.

Because Miro is the client for a video publishing platform that allows content providers to publish video streams to miro using rss and then have miro distribute it via bittorrent. Users are then able to search the Miro catalog and subscribe to those feeds if they are interested. For video-podcast addicts, thats really great.

Its not a tacked on feature, this is actually the core feature of Miro - its a distributed video player/content provider. Not an iTunes replacement at all.

This makes that BitTorrent client really make sense. Distributing video podcasts really has to be done via YouTube or not at all for a lot of people because it's such a pain to distribute the video due to bandwidth costs. BitTorrent helps, but many people aren't savvy with BitTorrent or are freaked out by piracy concerns.

I'm a huge proponent of more legitimate BitTorrent usage. It really is a good distribution protocol.

Looks interesting, however I really dislike iTunes' "everything under then sun" motto. If you are looking for something much more lightweight for playing music, check out mpd http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki . There is a really nice Mac mpd client called Theremin: http://theremin.sigterm.eu/

Thanks for the link. I've been using qmpd on the mac with a lot of success for some time now, but I'll check out the native solution.

How does it handle large (+50,000 files) collections?

Also: Oh no, it does that homepage spammy feeling option in the installer thing. This instantly makes me not want to donate, tbh, as it just feels scummy.

Miro is a great application, but i would not call it an "iTunes replacement". I use it as a "video feed reader".

Miro's a very cool project - the Participatory Culture Foundation does a bang-up job of productizing what they do and making it pretty.

For someone who'd want to switch from iTunes for higher performance and simplicity, rather than just going for an equivalent, what would I do?

I've switched to using foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/) and I think it's the first music player that I actually like. It's extremely simple and I've found it quite fast and responsive, even on my netbook.

I'd also strongly recommend foobar2000. It's incredibly fast, automatically adds music pretty much as soon as it's in the directory, is extremely customizable, and can look really, really nice. It has customizable global hotkeys, addon support, but works well out of the box.

If any one is still trying to use iTunes on Windows, I strongly urge you to at least try foobar2000. Once I switched, there was just no way I was going back to iTunes. It alleviates so many of the stupid daily annoyances I had with iTunes.

Er, I should have specified "on a Mac." Foobar is Windows-only AFAIK.

Try Banshee

If you're in the one of lucky countries (or have credit card from one of them) I'd suggest Spotify, their client is marvelous (the best UI for a music player ever and also very fast), supports playing local files and since last version also syncing with Apple devices (maybe some others too, haven't had occasion to check).

Oh I just read the heading 'iTunes replacement', installed it and plugged in my iPhone to see how it behaves; and ta-da nothing happens! My mistake that I did not read the features, but whatever, why do we want to call it an iTunes replacement when it can't even sync

I'd have hoped that an 'iTunes replacement' would be one that's somewhat less bloaty. I don't see Miro filling that gap, given it includes such nonsense as a BitTorrent client.

Which is actually the greatest feature of Miro. There are a lot of interesting feeds flying around the Miro bittorrent network. For example all confreaks conference videos.

Isn't that how Miro started life? As a video player that used torrents for distribution, and RSS feeds for discovery?

In that light, the inclusion of a BitTorrent client is less surprising.

Yes, exactly. And it actually works and is used.

But can it play files over DAAP? That is the (my) holy grail for Mac music.

Songbird sort-of can, in a buggy crashy way. Nothing else I have tried (Banshee, Amarok, Rhythmbox, firefly player jar) compiles and loads and runs an plays on Mac.

Yeah, it has DAAP support.

an "open" media player that is trying to eat Apples crumbs and wants independents to join in should have some kind of decentralized market for producers and publishers.

That website makes me not want their software.

You obviously don't visit much open source software websites. I thought this one wasn't bad at all compared to what I'm used to.

I've been a long time user of VLC media player and unsure if it'd be worthwhile to make the switch. Did anyone transition from VLC to Miro?

on mac (MBP laptop):

- it doesn't react on previous/play/next buttons on keyboard

- no last.fm integration

The hackers solution. A media server running mpd or XMMS2, with the proper metadata organizing utility for your medialib. Plus running mplayer and possibly some ffmpeg tweaking for when you're out in the deep end. Plays anything, anywhere, and leaves the rest up to your imagination.

I guess Miro is great, but any complete solution will always be inferior to the proper tools for the right jobs.

The first thing that struck me was how visually identical to iTunes it was. Considering how Apple sued Samsung over UI similarity, I wouldn't be surprised if Miro could run into similar problems.

But can it play files over DAAP? That is the (my) holy grail for Mac music.

Songbird sort-of can, in a buggy crashy way. Nothing else U have

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