This is the last release under the name of “Democracy Player”, soon to be Mira. Included in this mature beta are several new features. Among them, auto-updating (using Sparkle), “folder watching”, resume playback, better proxy support, improved performance, and more. Folder watching is a feature that automatically adds videos located in a specified folder to your collection. For more, go here.
Rating: 4.5/5
General Info: To learn what VisualHub does one can dissect the name. Visual-Hub. OK, so you still can’t guess. VisualHub is a video conversion app that can convert just about anything you would need to. It uses the reasonably fast back-end FFmpeg to convert video at a speedier pace than QuickTime Pro. It converts video in about real-time on a new Mac. You don’t have to know that an iPod with video can handle 640 by 480 resolution video at 30 frames per second to use this app. VisualHub has presets that can convert video to formats supported by ?ج£¬øtv, iPod 5G, North American and non-North American TV, PSP, Final Cut, DVD, Wii, various web formats, and a whole lot more than you’ll ever need.
In addition to all of those presets, you can change all of the usual advanced options like crop, deinterlace, resolution, frame rate, bitrate, codecs, and (you guessed it) a lot more. Very convenient and timesaving is the fact that you can save these settings as a file to make your own presets. Another timesaving aspect is preview and “video info”. Preview alone can do a lot to prevent you from using the wrong settings, saving re-encoding time. The best thing about VisualHub is it’s price. QuickTime Pro costs $29.99 at first. The problem Apple QuickTime Pro has is, besides it’s slowness, that you can lose your license with an upgrade to the next major version. Also, that license losing upgrade is essentially forced as new iTunes music and video often requires QuickTIme to be at it’s latest version. Next contenders, Roxio’s Popcorn and Crunch, $49.99 and $39.99. VisualHub’s price is $23.32. FFmpeg X is free and hard to install, and doesn’t work too well.
The only problems I have with VisualHub are with it’s interface. On the top left of the main window is a box showing “VisualHub” and more info about the app. Why? It simply wastes space on a product you paid for. Second, the “To:” label designating the sections of presets is discolored and has it’s own background. Lastly, is the reliance on ugly, separated palettes. Apps like VoodooPad at least give you the option of having them in a “drawer”. Ok, so those are small points, but they’re irritating and seem easily fixable.
Who would need VisualHub? Anyone who needs to convert video to anything other than iPod formats, iSquint and iTunes are free solutions for iPod. VisualHub looks to be the best consumer level app for converting video.
Retail Price:?Ǭ† $23.32
Site: http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/
Rating: 4/5
General Info: This application’s primary purposes are: automatically downloading, viewing, and cataloging your video content. Soon to be known as Mira, Democracy is one of the most Mac-like multi-platform programs I have ever used. It just exudes the look and feel of a Mac app. It even uses QuickTime and VLC under the hood to play video. OK, so what really is Democracy? Well it’s a lot like iTunes for video. While iTunes can be used for video podcasts, this takes it to the next level. It trounces iTunes’ video capabilities with several main features. One is an integrated Bittorrent engine. While Bittorrent can easily be used for stealing, it also makes High Definition video cheap to distribute. Another neat feature is browsing of YouTube, Google, and other video sites with the added ability of downloading videos in flash format. Speaking of flash format, Democracy can also play virtually any video format you throw at it. It also features a “Channel Guide” akin to iTunes’ podcast directory. Here’s the biggest weak point. Speeds of the “Channel Guide” have become reasonable, yet the content rating and featured videos remain too static. The selection available on the main page remain the virtually the same day after day. Another problem is syncing with your iPod is not built in … yet, the developers have stated their plans for syncing with mobile devices in future versions. Currently, Democracy is in late stages of beta, 0.9.5.3.
Retail Price: Free and Open Source
Site: http://www.getdemocracy.com/
