-- Please Read: * Please go to: http://order.kagi.com/?47D Even if you don't want to donate, I want you to read the current situation the Inmatrix site and this program is currently in. --- What's new in v4.00: Legend : "*" = New "+" = Change "-" = Fix New : * Zoom Player Professional has been split into a third version. "Zoom Player WMV Professional" is a seperate version of Zoom Player which is capable of playing DRM encoded Windows Media files. Due to the licensing fees involved in playing DRM content files, Zoom Player WMV Professional requires a purchase upgrade from any previous version of Zoom Player. In order to play DRM files you must first obtain the DRM license by using Windows Media Player 9 to obtain the license, or with certain WM-DVD discs, just by inserting the disc in the drive for the first time (note that license can expire after several sessions). You must also download this patch from microsoft which fixes important issues with Windows Media DRM playback: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823738 * Zoom Player now has an Audio-Bar mode. Playing files in the Audio-Bar mode will disable any video output and certain features that relate to video output and navigation. There is also a new Audio-Bar default skin element with 3 visual configuration (F4/F5/F6). You can switch to Audio-Bar mode by pressing F2, or using the new skin button. * Double clicking on the file name area will now switch between Audio mode and DVD Mode. * The Navigator Interfaces have been rewritten from scratch. Most of the functionality has remained the same, but the graphical elements have a clearer look and are now skinnable. Here are the usability changes: - The File Navigator 1. Switching between the file and drive listing is now done using the left/right (directions switched). 2. The right direction in the file navigator will go up a directory where possible. 3. The current path is now always visible. - The Play List Navigator: 1. The design has changed entirely, the display is now split into three regions, the main play list, the current directory for the highlighted file and a mini file browser. 2. When the Play List items are active, pressing the Left button will remove the currently highlighted item from the list. 3. When using the Up/Down buttons within the Play List items, the file browser will automatically switch the current location of the highlighted file. 4. The Right button switches between the Play List items and the File Browser. 5. Pressing Enter in the file browser will add a highlighted file or enter a directory. 6. Pressing the Left button in the file browser will add an entire directory or all the files in the directory if a file is highlighted - The Media Library Navigator: 1. Similar to the File Navigator design, the media categories are now visible on the left pane at all times. 2. The Right/Left buttons always switch between categories and the active category is highlighted on the left pane. * The Professional version of Zoom Player can now automatically extract and play any Archive Format (default presets for 7Z,ARJ,BZ2,CAB,RAR and ZIP using the freely available 7-Zip extraction suite). You can configure your own extractors under "Options / Values / Other", but I recommend grabbing 7-Zip at www.7-zip.org as it's free and fast. This new feature can also be used to extract AlbumWrap MP3 files using the freeware "mp3splt.exe" tool from "http://mp3splt.sf.net". * New Stream Selection Interface (Only for the Professional version) allowing you to automatically select Audio and Subtitle streams according to Language Codes, Stream Name text matching and specific stream numbers. * Zoom Player can now filter out filters that can cause playback instability in standard playback mode through a Filter Black List. By default I have included the following filters that are known trouble-makers: BiCubic Resizer DivX Antifreeze DeDynamic Audio Filter Morgan Stream Switcher Subtitle Mixer Subtitle Parser TFM Audio Filter You can easily add/remove filters to the black list through the options dialog (Filter Control / Standard Media Playback). This should make Zoom Player a lot more stable on systems where a lot of 3rd party software have been installed. * On a fresh install, Zoom Player will look for missing components required to play popular file formats. If no components are detected for a specific file format, you will be prompted to go to the media setup guide. This check is only done once when installing a new version. * Zoom Player will now try to load JPEG image files outside of DirectShow. It seems that DirectShow is very resolution-limited and even the best display hardware doesn't support a video-surface with the resolution captured by recent Digital Cameras. The new JPEG Module uses a software bilinear scaler to resize the images, so quality should be better than standard image viewers, although a bit slower. You can disable the JPEG Module and let DirectShow try to load these images under "Advanced Options / Filter Control / Settings". * Customized Media Playback Splitter, Audio and Video profiles can now blacklist themselves according to the file extension being played (previously you could only whitelist extensions). * New Entry (Advanced Options / Values / Other) allowing you to Auto-Get the duration of Media Files according to file extensions. The default is not to Auto-Get as this slows down loading of play lists, however an entry of "AVI;MP3;MPA;OGG" won't slow it too much. * New Setting (Options / DVD Setup) allowing you to hide the Audio/Video decoder profiles that are not currently registered on your computer. * New Setting (Advanced Options / Mouse Wheel) allowing you to reverse the direction of the mouse wheel with regards to the functions it calls. * New Setting (Advanced Options / Settings / Playback), allowing the Media Definition File (a file containing information on the file being played such as color values, volume, balance, etc...) to be saved automatically (default:off). * New Setting (Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators) allowing you to have the Play List Navigator opened if the Chapter Navigator is opened and doesn't contain any chapters. * New Setting (Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators) allowing you to select whether the Left Pane on the File and Media Library navigators is visible. When the Pane is invisible, the top-directory box will show additional details about the media category and drives. * New Setting (Advanced Options / Control Bar / Settings) allowing you to limit the control bar so that it only shows up on mouse movement when in fullscreen mode. * New Setting (Advanced Options / Control Bar / Settings) allowing you to have the Control Bar always visible when playing an Audio file in fullscreen. * New Button (Advanced Options / Filter Control / Management / Registered Filter Manager) on the Registered Filter Manager allowing you to Re-Register the DirectShow filters that come as default with windows. This should help in such cases where a 3rd party program can destabilize the default system or in case you want to unregister all filter and restore your system to a default state. * New Color Selection (Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators) for Navigators Internal, External and Select Framing Colors. * You will now be prompted to install DirectVobSub if it's not installed on your system (only one time when a new version is installed). * New "/SPEAKER:[value]" command line parameter allowing you to set the Windows Speaker setting. Zoom Player will restore the default speaker value when exiting. Possible values are: /SPEAKER:0 - Direct Out /SPEAKER:1 - Headphone /SPEAKER:2 - Mono /SPEAKER:3 - Quad /SPEAKER:4 - Stereo /SPEAKER:5 - Surround /SPEAKER:6 - 5.1 /SPEAKER:7 - 7.1 * New "/AUDBAR" command line parameter starting Zoom Player in Audio-Bar mode. * New "/LOCKFS" command line parameter which locks Zoom Player in fullscreen mode (useful for Kiosk-Type operation). * New "/VOL" command line parameter allowing you to set the Zoom Player volume level on start-up. Value can be 0-100. Example: "x:\path\to\zoom player\zplayer.exe" /vol:75 * New "/MEDIANAV:[CATEGORY]" parameter allowing you to start Zoom Player opened in the Media Library Navigator at a specific category. Example: "x:\path\to\zoom player\zplayer.exe" "/MEDIANAV:TV Shows" * New "/EJECT:[n]" command line parameter allowing you to eject a CD/DVD drive from the command line. Example: "x:\path\to\zplayer.exe" /EJECT:F * Zoom Player can now associate and play CellPhone 3GPP (.3GP) s263 video files (Must have QuickTime installed for it to play). * You can now associate the OptimFROG (.OFR) extension and play OptimFROG files once you the decoder installed. OptimFROG is yet another lossless audio compression format (in the nature of APE and FLAC). You can get the OptimFROG decoder here: http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/formats/optimfrog.shtml * You can now associate the ".FLAC" extension. FLAC is an Open-Source lossless Audio Format. You still need a decoder for it to play. For more information see: http://www.inmatrix.com/articles/mediasetup.shtml * You can now associate the ".MPC" extension. MPC is a lossy audio format similar to MP3 and Vorbis. * Two new sections have been added to the Menu file. These new sections allow you to define the menu used for the Context Menu Navigator in DVD and Media modes. I have included useful default entries for these. * Zoom Player should now support WMV PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio). You must set the Aspect Ratio mode to Derived for PAR to kick in (you should always set the Aspect Ratio to Derived unless you have other special requirements). * The LCD interface has been extended and can now be used to call Zoom Player standard and extended functions. * New Toggle (Advanced Options / Settings / Toggles) allowing you to choose how text is truncated to fit the desired space. This effect a lot of text elements within Zoom Player such as the Navigator display and ID3 display. The default setting is to "Vowel Decimation" which tries to remove vowels so that more text remains readable. The alternative is to cut the end of the text. * Two new ID3 display tags "" returning the length of the currently playing file and "" returning the total duration for the entire play list. * The DVD AutoAR feature can now execute an external program when a DVD Aspect Ratio mode changes. * Zoom Player can now display APE Tags from MPC/MP3/APE/FLAC files. * Zoom Player can now display WMF Tags from WMA files. * Zoom Player can now play UTF8 encoded M3U play lists. * Zoom Player now has 4 default skin visual configuration modes, one with only the volume control (Press "F4"), the same layout with the Balance and Play Rate controls (Press "F5") or the minimalistic layout (Press "F6") or the Video Only Layout (Press "F7"). * New Profiles for Nero Digital filters. These filters seem to be capable of decoding MPEG1 audio (including MP3), MPEG1 Video, XVID and DIVX. Playback is not perfect, I noticed big issues with DIVX playback. These filters are also supposed to decode MPEG2 video and possibly even DVD, but I was unable to get them to work. * New Profile for the Elecard Video Decoder as a DVD Video Decoder. It may only work for unencrypted DVDs. * New "Select All" button on the Association Page. * The ScanCode button (Options / Keys) now shows you when a multi-media key is pressed so you can now identify such keys and add support for them in the keyboard file using the "mcAddKey" function. * Two new skin variables "cBarNoText" and "tLineNoText" allowing you to disable text display on the timeline and control bar timeline. * Two new skin variables "tLineFontHeight" and "cBarFontHeight" which are superseding "tLineFontSize" and "cBarFontSize" which were ill suited for Large Fonts. Support for the older variable remains to keep compatibility with old fonts. * New skin variable "AudioSkin" implying that the specified skin doesn't contain any video area. * New skin constant "", showing the user selectable entry that usually shows within the timeline (useful to use if you want to disable the text on the timeline itself and show it elsewhere). * New Keyboard Macro (Shift+"V") to enable/disable the Internal Screen Saver. This macro uses the new "fnSSaverToggle" function. Changes : + Zoom Player now supports VMR7 Windowed playback in all play modes. If you previously used a customized video renderer, make sure to update your settings. + Audio DSP should take less CPU power, especially under SSE/SSE2 capable processors. + The External Audio Track support has been greatly expanded. You can now specify an alternative search path for External Audio Tracks (Advanced Options / Values / Other), audio track naming is now more flexible, for example: MyVideo.avi MyVideo.english.mp3 MyVideo.spanish.wav MyVideo.japanese.mpc All are valid names now. You can use any file format specified as an audio extension under "Advanced Options / Values / Extensions". + The Customized Media Playback configuration dialogs should now be a little easier to understand. + The Segment Matching Code has been enhanced to support "*" masking. This new method only works when used at the end of the mask. For example, a mask of "x??.*" would match the following: Andromeda.4x01.answers_given_to_questions_never_asked.avi Andromeda.4x02.pieces_of_eight.mpg Andromeda.4x03.waking_the_tyrants_device.avi And so forth ... + SHOUTcast Playback should now be more reliable, Zoom Player will now try the alternate servers if one fails to connect. + The "System" Options dialog entry has been replaced with a "Formats" entry. The content of the previous "System" dialog has been moved to the "System Overview" tab within the new "Formats" section. Another tab on the formats section now contains a list of detected missing playback components with links to where you can download and get more information about each component/format. + If Windows Animation is enabled (in windows), Zoom Player will no longer animate the window when going fullscreen or when minimizing as it's not very elegant. + The "zplayer.regpath" file now allows you to specify a second line with the new Zoom Player Window Name so that you can run multiple instances of Zoom Player and control each remotely as a unique entity. For example, the content of the "zplayer.regpath" file would look like this: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VirtuaMedia\ZoomPlayer2 Zoom Two + The "System" Options dialog section now displays the merit of each listed filter and also lists known "bad filter" offenders (filters can cause cause audio-loss, flipped video image and so forth). + The Flash (SWF files) background color is now set to the fullscreen background color (Advanced Options / Values / Interface), default to black. + The Flash and QuickTime playback experience should be better now. The Right-Click context menu should now work perfectly and the keyboard/mouse should be a bit more responsive. + DVD "VIDEO_TS.IFO" files are now ALWAYS listed on the File and Media Library navigators. + OGM Audio Selection should now work even if the OGG Splitter is not set to Output all Streams. + Zoom Player will now check your DirectX version when you try to select the VMR9 as the Video Renderer and inform you if you don't have DirectX v9 installed. + The external Minimalistic and Ultra Minimalistic skins have been removed as their functionality is more than covered by the new skin layouts within the default skin. + Zoom Player now checks the DirectVobSub path list when looking for subtitle files instead of only looking in the same directory as the media file. + The Customized Media Playback Audio/Video Decoder configuration dialog now fits 800x600 resolution in advanced mode. + The /F:[n] and /Z:[n] will now allow you to force Zoom Player to fullscreen/zoom mode on a selected monitor even if Zoom Player is already running. + DVD Auto-AR values are now applied only once each time the Aspect Ratio mode changes instead of every chapter. + The screenshot function will now save the screenshot to the "My Documents" folder if no alternative folder is specified. + New "function" parameter on the "DrawExText" skinning function allowing you to specify a double-click function for text labels. + Vowel decimation is now used to ensure ID3 display fits within the display area. + The Resize Navigator now displays the current Video Aspect Ratio. + Adding a chapter from the chapter editor dialog will now enter the specified text as the chapter name if such a text was given. + You can now select the Custom Mouse Wheel function from a list instead of manually typing it in. + Going fullscreen now moves the Zoom Player window to the front. + The System Overview now lists the filter version numbers when the filter files contain them. + The Alt+"A" macro will now also open the AC3Filter property dialog. + The F1 keyboard macro now opens the key-help dialog with the focus on the search field. Fixes : - Zoom Player could stop responding when trying to load a new media file while the first media file was still being loaded. - Wrong date encoding error could pop when opening files with no creation dates (could happen with some VCD/SVCD images). - Playing multiple VIDEO_TS.IFO file through a play list should now work again (as long as the IFO files are not looped in a DVD Menu). - Going to fullscreen on a second monitor using the setting on "Options / Values / Interface" would set the fullscreen size according to the resolution of the monitor the user interface currently resides on instead of the real monitor resolution. - Using Zoom Player to execute external files could cause certain Zoom Player features to stop responding. - Opening a DVD while another DVD is already playing would not save the last position properly for the original DVD. - Remembering the last position on media files would ignore the number of days to save this data and would in fact save it forever. Furthermore, several entries were kept for each file played. It is recommended that you erase the old "zplayer.playcache" file as old entries may stick forever. - The Increase/Decrease Play Rate wasn't working in the correct order when increase after decreasing or the other way around. - Dragging the Zoom Player window across monitors or changing resolution should no longer disable the VMR9 scaling fix. - Dragging the Zoom Player window across monitors or changing resolution should no longer reset the VMR9 color control values. - Dragging the Zoom Player window across monitors or changing resolution should no longer reset the Overlay color control values. - The /Q parameter now works when used in combination with the scene-cut end playback event. - Flash end-of-file should now be detected better. - Flash clipping should now be OK when setting to the Source or Derived AR modes. - The Setting to have ZP not clear the play list when opening files externally, wasn't really working (play list was getting cleared anyhow). - Enter will now open the selected navigator in DVD Mode as long as there is no DVD playing. - If customized media playback failed to renderer a graph, it was possible that a valid standard graph would get created, but the video would wrongfully appear in an external window. - Changing the Customized Media Mode Splitter twice would throw an error about the file being in use. - The Screen Snap Pixel value would not save properly. - Could not save a Scene-Cut file for DVD discs if they were not previously played. - Trying to play a truly locked media file (most applications allow you to read files even if they are using them, so not a lot of files are truly locked) could cause ZP to stop responding after an error dialog popped. - The DrawExText "ShadeBottom" parameter was actually using the value from the "ShadeTop" parameter. - Switching skins would not set the active skin elements correctly. - The Control Bar and TimeLine fonts should now appear properly when Windows is set to 120dpi Large Fonts. - Can now load UTF8 file names from WPL play list files. - Fixed too many unicode related issues to even begin listing them here. - "SetOPMWReversed" wasn't exported properly for translation. - Possible "Insert Disc in Drive" dialog opening inappropriately when opening an ejected DVD drive. - The /OpenDrive parameter would open a dialog asking you to insert a disc if a CD drive has been ejected and the drive then opened. - Mouse wheel would not work properly when the play list editor window was visible before going to fullscreen. - Custom Media Playback should now work with WMV file that use internal scripting code. - With Random Play enabled, items would play that were previously removed from the play list. - Tab switching in options dialog is now more logical. --- * The Complete Change list history can be found on-line at: http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml --- End.