Miro 3.0 and Miro Video Converter Make Movie Watching a Breeze

by Lisa Hoover - Mar. 29, 2010Comments (1)

It's been a while since open source media player Miro got an overhaul, but this one was worth waiting for. Miro 3.0 has just been released and it contains a batch of new features.

The development team has also released the Miro Video Converter, a useful open source tool for converting video to several kinds of formats -- including Ogg Theora. Let's take a quick look at both applications.

Miro 3.0

Though past iterations of Miro have always been strong contenders in the media player market, Miro 3.0 really hits the mark with its new features. First of all, it's noticeably faster. The project's developers say it launches 150% times faster than previous versions, and torrents download quicker than ever thanks to under-the-hood retooling.

The maximum video volume has been amped up to twice as high, making video playback on tiny laptop speakers sound a lot better. Subtitles are now embedded in the same files as the video to make subtitle management easier, and file information is now easier to edit as well.

Check out the release notes for a full run-down of what's new and improved in Miro 3.0. If you've never used the app before, there's a Miro user guide that walks you through everything you need to know.

Miro Video Converter

If you're looking for a dead simple way to convert video to MP4, Theora, or formats for mobile devices, then the new Miro Video Converter (MVC) is what you'll want. It's so easy to use that is has virtually no features -- just choose a video source and what format you want it converted to, and you're done. The apps presets take care of the rest.

MVC supports eight different Android phones, the iPod touch, Classic, and Nano, the iPhone, and the PSP gaming device. Original video formats can run the gamut from AVI and FLV to MOV and XVID.

MVC is based on the powerful video engine FFMPEG, and uses ffmpeg2theora for Theora conversion.