It’s a Democracy Player!
We are excited to release Baby Democracy Player (version 0.8.4) today, for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Baby Democracy is our first child, the first stage in a growing Democracy Player to come! We’ll let you know when Democracy Player becomes a toddler, a schoolkid, etc. (We’ll have pictures soon!) Baby Democracy is more stable and faster too, it’s a strong and healthy baby! Download it here.
Democracy Player is now much, much more stable– we’ve fixed every crash and freeze that we know about. The application is also much faster, especially with lots of videos. This version is still a beta, but we’re getting close to shedding our infant coats and becoming a 1.0 app. Our development team have been waiting anxiously to release 0.8.4 Democracy Player because there is two months of intense development that we have to show. The developers would also like me to note that we finished exactly 420 ‘tickets’ (bug reports, features, etc) for this release.
There are also a couple new features, most notably: you can now use Democracy Player as a desktop video player– you can drag and drop or open videos in Democracy from your desktop. They will start playing and will be imported into your library. This is an important step towards making Democracy a good homebase for all the videos on your computer. (On a mac, this is especially nice because you can watch videos fullscreen with nice fullscreen controls, without buying Quicktime Pro.)
Finally, we are already in week 2 of our 4 week development cycle for version 0.9. Now that we’ve stabilized the backend, there are lots of features to look forward to– folders, playlists, drag and drop within the app, non-english versions of the app (click here to help translate), Democracy as a generic torrent application, and for all you publishers: one-click subscribe and install / subscribe. Plus a bunch of nice UI tweaks and further speed improvements.
We’ll be releasing development versions of 0.9 each Friday and we could really, really use your help testing, if you like living on the edge. Just join the testers list we’ll email you when we post a new version and you can check out the new features as they arrive.
See how cute our baby is at getmiro.com.
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Any plans for a dapper .deb? The current Ubuntu deb is broken on Dapper.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Can you please release a Universal Binary for Macs?
Thanks a lot.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:43 pm
I’d like to second the request for a universal binary. Would love to give you a try!
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Great work! Keep it up guys!
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Sorry for the delay in getting the Ubuntu page updated. The current .debs should work for Dapper Drake.
http://www.getmiro.com/downloads/ubuntu.php
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Amazing.. it doesn’t have the processor flooding problem so far. Good job you guys.
One thing though, I get no rss info (headlines, links, thumbnail) from Rocketboom with this version.
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:32 pm
I’ll throw my hat in for a Universal Binary version as well. We like to demo our HD feeds using Democracy and a MacMini, but with the current versions they just choke in Rosetta. UB would be awesome!
June 22nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
From above:
“Our development team have been waiting anxiously to release 0.8.4 Democracy Player because there is two months of intense development that we have to show.”
Two subject-verb agreement errors in one sentence! That’s some stellar writing…
(the team HAS been waiting, and there ARE two months)
Otherwise, congratulations!
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:40 pm
A universal binary version would be awesome… as previously mentioned by others. Cos I gotta say, in a couple of spots like… oh, even when you launch it - are dog slow on a souped up MacBookPro.
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:13 am
I like the interface and the general concept. But one main feature seems to be missing: streaming video! When I go to the website I can stream video but with the player I need to download first because I can see the first frame. Why’s that?
I am totally pro open content, totally. Am doing composing professionally and using Creative Commons all the time. So all respect to you people!
June 23rd, 2006 at 3:32 am
email link failed
so here’s some feedback:
—–
I downloaded Democracy-0.8.4.1.dmg
mounted it on my PowerBook
[1.67 GHz G4 / 512 MB / OSX v 10.4.6]
dragged the new “Democracy” player app into Applications
fired it up…
the menu bar shows and it appears to be running
but
video channel collection and window menus have nothing but grayed-out items
no window ever displays
Democracy~QuitDemocracy does not work [must quit via doc icon menu]
jeffs
—–
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:01 am
Here’s another Universal binary vote.
June 23rd, 2006 at 6:53 am
Universal Binary! Yes, please!
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:52 am
Hi everyone, I’m one of the directors at PCF. We are very anxious to put out an Intel Mac version of Democracy (I’m posting this comment on a MacBook Pro).
Here’s the situation: Democracy Player is written in Python which runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux (along with some native code for the interface on each platform). On the Mac, we use open source software called Py2app which runs Python code as a Mac application. However, there isn’t yet a finished Intel version of Py2app and therefore, Democracy doesn’t run natively.
We have been experimenting with the beta version of the next Py2app release, which is Intel native, but there are still a lot of bugs that prevent Democracy from working correctly (though it does work FAST). We’re in touch with the developers at Py2app and have told them the problems that we’re running into. Hopefully, it won’t be long before they release the native version.
We should be able to put out an Intel native version of Democracy Player within a day or two of getting a working version of Py2app. Stay tuned…
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:03 am
Having the same issue as jeffs above;
Downloaded new version, it appears to be running in the dock
but there is no visible window and the toolbar is greyed out.
Seems to be a pretty big bug, had no problems before it ran great.
Also on a powerbook; Aluminium 1.25 Ghz 15 inch running
10.4.6
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
any responses for Rory and myself?? like the work you folks do, just want to see it running before I recommend it to my students and colleagues as an upgrade.
jeffs
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Ran into the same issue as Rory above - On a dual 2.0 Ghz G5, the new version of Democracy doesn’t draw the user interface window, although it appears to be running based on the Dock icon as well as the toolbar at the top of the screen. OS X version 10.4.6
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:42 pm
The Ubuntu packages are still broken:
dwelch@mnahmnah:~/Desktop$ sudo dpkg –install democracyplayer_0.8.4.1-1_i386.deb
(Reading database … 89863 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace democracyplayer 0.8.4.1-1 (using democracyplayer_0.8.4.1-1_i386.deb) …
Unpacking replacement democracyplayer …
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of democracyplayer:
democracyplayer depends on libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.12.3); however:
Version of libpango1.0-0 on system is 1.12.2-0ubuntu3.
dpkg: error processing democracyplayer (–install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
democracyplayer
I can “force it” of course, but I can’t find any distribution of libpango that met the requirement. Any ideas?
June 24th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Jeff and Rory,
I’m sorry to get back to you late, but thanks for letting us know what you’re getting with the Player — it’s important.
Are either of you on intels? And are either of you upgrading from a previous version? If you are, you can see if this is happening again by removing your old Democracy database (it might be corrupted) and downloading again if you’re into doing that.
So, this is a bug that we need to look into and get fixed. We haven’t seen this reported yet. I will also ask around to find out more. If both of you could report it to our bug tracker here, we will definitely get this bug fixed:
https://develop.participatoryculture.org/projects/democracy/newticket
Do you think you can make sure to remind us what system you are on, if this is reproducible, include your logs if you have them. If you want to some instructions on how to do this, you can read our bug guide here:
https://develop.participatoryculture.org/projects/democracy/wiki/DemocracyTesters
June 24th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Also, English snob, you are a snob and that was terrible writing!
Thanks!!jhfkash@
June 24th, 2006 at 7:26 am
I’m on an intel mac too, so I know what you guys are talking about. Knowing that there is this much demand makes me want to see if we can pressure the py2app people more than we already have!!
June 24th, 2006 at 9:02 am
Jeff and Rory– you’ll probably be able to fix your problem by searching for ‘Democracy Player’ and deleting the Democracy folder that is in your Application Support directory. This will cause you to lose your channels, but should get Democracy Player working again. Sorry about this, it appears to be an upgrade bug that’s affecting a small percentage of Mac users (we test upgrading before every release, but people with other computers sometimes have slightly different things going on under the hood). We’ll be putting out a slightly updated version that should fix the problem very soon.
June 25th, 2006 at 5:49 am
phoneboy, forcing it seems to work.
sudo dpkg –force-all -i de*.deb
cheers
June 28th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
i really like democracy (both ;)). it looks very nice and it’s open source. thank you very much. BUT: every time i install an update my feeds are gone….. and i don’t even remember them (my fault)… anyway, please keep updating this great app! and hopefully the next version will automatically import all my feeds and clips….
June 28th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
just to update - you’ll want to go ahead and ’sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade’ on Ubuntu
after you install the two .debs you’ll have problems & have to remove dp before apt-getting in the future
June 29th, 2006 at 10:33 am
deleting the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Democracy directory did the trick, upgrading my PPC Powerbook. thanks, jeffs
June 29th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Guys, I gotta say that I really like what you are doing. Free to the public, group involvment and to top it all off it is open source. I like that it is for Linux as well because I am a big fan of Linux. I just think that the way you are implementing it seems a little off. The files sizes are huge and you really can’t play the videos one after another without downloading each one. I know that makes me sound extremly lazy, but it adds a lot to the mood when you can sit back and enjoy the show. I hope to someday have a channel on this program, though I think it is only fair to lower the video quality quite a bit in order to get it to be streaming capable. Once again, love the project, but I think that we can make it a lot better still.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Thanks everyone.
Lexen, you can check off the box for autodownload, which will download any new videos on that channel. If you want the old stuff too, just change your settings to download all videos. That way, you can sit back and relax, which is the whole point of pre-delivery and downloading videos (you don’t have to wait!).
June 30th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Thanks, admittedly I didn’t notice those options when I made that post. The program is better then I thought it was. I hope they will continue to make the program better and better.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Another vote te for for a Universal Binary for us Macbook Pro users… THANKS!
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:10 am
The py2app persons updated to a universal version last week! We’ve got a universal binary of Democracy Player going. We’ll probably release this week, after some testing. If any of you want to help us test it, just to see how it performs, please email oppy@pculture.org
December 31st, 2006 at 7:42 pm
I am having the upgrade problem on my PPC PowerBook and deleting the Democracy folder under Application Support is not helping. I installed some of the earliest versions, might there be another database somewhere under a different name I am missing?
January 6th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I’m having a problem installing onto Ubuntu. I got the data package installed, but when i try and install the player package, it says “Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libatkl.0-0″ What do I do!?!?!?! (i’m also fairly new to Ubuntu)
Thanks a lot for any help.