Package: miro
Version: 4.0.4-1
I installed the Miro package on a Debian wheezy system that uses KDE. I
then found to my surprise that Miro is registered to play local video
files, and even as the default player for many video types!
However, Miro does not appear to be designed as a player for local
files:
a) When playing a local video file, Miro does not show the selected
video in the UI immediately (instead it shows the Miro guide Web
page). To find it, the user needs to select "Videos" from the menu
on the left and then click on the play button on the appropriate
file - which is not very user-friendly when the user has already
clicked on a specific video file in the file manager, and not
consistent with how other local video players behave.
b) Even when playing a local video file, Miro makes lots of network
connections on startup (which ended up creating over 1 megabyte of
network traffic when I tested it, even with only a couple of
subscribed feeds and no queued downloads).
This is a problem both in relation to being spyware (in effect, Miro
tells at least miroguide.com, Google and doubleclick.net that I just
clicked on a local video file), and in that it makes clicking on a
local video file unexpectedly create a lot of network traffic, which
could be expensive in some situations (e.g., if you have an
expensive pay-per-megabyte network connection that you set up only
to use ssh for a short time). And if there is ever a security bug in
the embedded Web browser, this makes even playing a local video file
possibly trigger the bug.
To reproduce:
1. Install a standard KDE desktop and Miro.
2. Fetch a Theora video, for example:
wget http://v2v.cc/~j/theora_testsuite/320x240.ogv
3. Open the .ogv video file using your graphical file manager.
(I clicked on the file in Dolphin, which is KDE's default file
manager).
4. Observe that it starts Miro, which displays the Miro guide (and not
the selected video) on startup.
I didn't try Gnome or XFCE or LXDE, but I think the problem exists there
too: at least "xdg-open 320x240.ogv" on the KDE system also runs Miro.
Though it may be that the priority system for selecting default
applications is different on KDE and Gnome (a Web search revealed that
Gnome uses a "defaults.list" file, but KDE seems to have some other
system for assigning priorities; but I don't know if that is still the
case or if Debian has something special).
I do not know why Miro seems to be the default on my KDE system for the
MIME types that Miro supports; I also have KDE's Dragon Player and VLC
installed, and either one would be better than Miro for a local file.
To fix the bug, perhaps /usr/share/applications/miro.desktop should not
list the MimeType entry at all? Or if there is a generic way for
distributions to set priorities for software associations, assign a very
low priority to Miro.
Another fix would be to make Miro more suitable as a local player: for
instance, have an "Offline mode" which never makes network connections,
and, when playing a local video file, use the offline mode automatically
and show the selected video in the UI at startup.
This bug is made more annoying by the large number of video file MIME
types. I can change the application preferences by hand (e.g., by using
KDE's System Settings / File Associations), but a) only one MIME type at
a time, b) only for one user at a time, and c) if Miro is later upgraded
to support a new MIME type, the bug reappears even if I had changed all
the previously supported video types manually.
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
