TX Custom Miro Player Hack Session

Presenter: Tiffiniy, Notes: Cheryl

Short overview of Miro

• simple player
• plays high quality video

Participatory Culture Foundation made the Miro player because TV is moving online and there wasn't a good player for online.

they see as problems:

• centralized video hosting like you-tube
• creator lock-in - closed systems = wrong direction
• corporate censorship

an open alternative?

• put users at the center by
  • making the player better
  • no gatekeepers, nothing between you, your videos & the player audience
• give creators flexibility

Participatory Culture Foundation (501c3)

• mission driven
• product focused

(501c3 is a tax status for non-profit organizations recognized within USA)

Miro

When you first open player you see channel guide Search channels within guide & throughout internet When you choose video to play it opens within player

Video can come in from anywhere think of it as a player centered web browser for video

Level playing field for indy media Competitive with dotcoms (commercial sites) Link TV and PBS (US Public Broadcasting System) (partnerships) Their player comes w/preloaded channels but you can take it (make your own player) and customize that

Showed PBS co-branded player - they have seen their videos get more downloads through Miro than any other system that they've tried - Andrew asked how they measure that, answer is through web statistics, source of what directs users to the video file

Miro Downloads 2007 - 2 million goal for 2008 - 6 million (already halfway there)

Mozilla Sustainability Model they have a plan for sustainability miro store & co-branded players

Open can win.

They plan to distribute USB drives with Miro player preloaded

get the player at http://getmiro.com

Videos download in background so if people keep Miro player on while they sleep then when they wake new videos will be available

Once you register and log in you can submit a channel to the Miro guideMiro gives people who submit their channel (RSS feed) one-click buttons "Subscribe using Miro": you enter your RSS feed and they generate HTML code for you to add to your web site

Link TV has whole page dedicated to Miro & their Miro Player

nrk beta, Norwegian public broadcasting channel is also using Miro, this will help with adoption and help Miro be taken seriously

They have a team of volunteers who moderate the Miro guide because they don't want porn in the guide - you can watch porn (or any other video) with Miro but they don't want it the guide

The guide also shows some metadata info about each video

they also have channels by category

you can submit your channel by web page or your RSS feed. if web page is used, miro will "scrape" the site, searching for pages with video in them - but the disadvantage of this method is that your videos will probably not have thumbnails showing withing the guide

Miro is available in over 100 languages Miro guide also has language-specific categories & channels you can surf through

If you have valid RSS feeds then your video descriptions will be pulled into your channel

Using the Player

when you play a video you can go to full screen when you move your mouse player controls come up esc key takes you back to your channels they're trying to emulate a TV experience in the future there will be a one stop solution for plugging this into your TV also a remote control for your TV

add channel by going to Edit > Add Channel from menu bar

also you can make playlists

any web page can be displayed - Miro is essentially a web browser with video playback features

videos are set to expire in 5 days by default but you can change an individual video to keep it

you can change the permalink that displays in the bottom of the player to direct ppl to your donation page, etc

on Macs people don't need to have the subscribe miro button - when they click on any feed it automatically pulls up miro (if browsing via Safari)

Making your own branded Miro player

• Use Miro Generator (for non commercial & testing purposes only) - http://www.getmiro.com/co-branding/ is the web form
• input the name of your player
• input startup url (defines where miro player goes when launched) - that page ideally would have a listing or guide of videos available through your player
• input your video RSS feed urls into "Default Video Feeds" - one feed url per line
• input your email address
• can include Additional Comments * click "Create My Miro" button

Upcoming Features

Miro will create a player you can download from their site and put up on your own site. They host your player for 12 hours, you must download and put on your own website (they can't be your download server)

Showed new interface coming soon - very beautiful Also ability to detect iPod coming soon

other feature that's coming is publisher integration - you will be able to publish via bittorrent or amazonS3 hosting

soon also a remote control you can use on your TV right now you can buy a plug that can connect your tv to your computer but the remote will make it more tv-like

they want to call web pages with video in them "channels"

Ability to have ratings are on the table Also chat between people watching same video the guide will be changed a bit so you can add video to it without making a web page

users here want social networking added in - see who else likes same video, helps you meet people of like interests and network

Old Media vs New Media

• Old corporate media system - they feed off the public pool
• New system - people have their own networks - these build up and get put in front of a lot more TVs

Q & A

Q-can you submit video anonymously?

A-you can put on YouTube anonymously, suggestion to post from Internet cafe undr anonymous acct program called Tor - an anonymity tool, routes you through various different servers so they can't tell where you're coming from (there may also be Tor FireFox plugins Torbutton & FoxTor) - may be problematic with video uploading because of large file sizes (test & report back) there will be more & more secure anonymous filesharing programs

there's also freenet, which hasn't been in development for some time, but is probably most advanced, most secure filesharing, but it's very slow