Wednesday, April 25, 2007

getdemocracy.com This free, open-source program not only plays all major video formats but also can search across all popular video-sharing services.

A few days ago I learned about an intriguing free open source media player called Democracy (soon to relaunch under the name Miro).

This tool bills itself as "the only video player you need," and they may be right about that. First of all, it plays all major video formats, no fuss. This includes Quicktime, Windows Media, MPEG, AVI, Real Media, and more. (More on video formats) One of my biggest pet peeves with mainstream online news sites is that most of them seem to require some particular player, which ends up needing an update or that just doesn't work.

Here's what else I like about Democracy/Miro:

• Find video on existing sharing services. This player allows you to directly search across YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, Blogdigger, Revver, DailyMotion, and Blip.tv. No need to run around to separate sites. (Drawback: Currently you can't search all of them at once, but I'll bet they're working on that.)
  
  
• iTunes-like interface. Browse your collection, make playlists, stay organized. Also you can use it as a video "podcatcher" to subscribe to any video RSS feed, podcast, or video blog.
  
  

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  Channels. You can set up your own "channel" on Democracy/Miro, list it in their channel guide, and create a channel promo. Savvy video news orgs should create their own Democracy/Miro channel and advertise it on their Web sites and elsewhere.
  
  
• Save your searches. You can save a search as a channel (kind of like a search feed) so you can get a steady supply of new videos that match your search query.
  
  
• Share favorite videos. "When you click on the envelope button for a given video or channel, Democracy Player opens up [a] share page. Also, you can 'star' videos you like and [Democracy] will automatically create your own personal feed of favorites."
  
  
• High-definition and full-screen display. Tired of that tiny YouTube video window? If you've got the bandwidth, they've got the higher-end viewing options.
  
  
• Torrent friendly. Many independent online video producers distribute their files via peer-to-peer systems such as BitTorrent to defray bandwidth costs. Democracy makes catching torrent files easy.

Why should news organizations care about Democracy/Miro? Because this tool offers online video audiences the functionality and freedom that more and more of them are coming to expect. They don't want to mess with your pet video player and file format; they just want online video to work.

More importantly, it seems obvious that video-sharing services such as Google Video may well become leading gateways to video news content, even for mainstream news organizations. Therefore, it probably makes sense to put at least clips or teasers for your online video on those services -- or maybe even entire segments or features.

In online media, the more findable you make your content, the better that content will support your business model. Media players like Democracy/Miro, which incorporate powerful search, subscription, and sharing features, may end up becoming as crucial to people finding your video content as Google currently is to people finding your text and photo content.

(Thanks to Slashdot Review for the tip.)

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