We're finally ready to release Zoom Player v8 RC1.
For the first time since v5, we are releasing a FREE version of Zoom Player.
The new version is called "Zoom Player Home FREE" and it's probably the most powerful and customizable free media player for the Windows PC.
Upgrade notes:
Since this is not the final version, the navigation interface skins currently available for download have not been updated and are missing a few files which you can copy over from the "Drapes" directory.
Premium users:
If you've previously purchased the premium version, you can download it here.
We are no longer promoting or selling the Premium version (it's still unofficially supported).
What's the difference between versions (FREE/Pro/MAX)?
Check out the Feature comparison chart.
Download:
Click here to download Zoom Player v8 RC1
P.S.
We have a few more items up for grab soon, a variant of the drapes nav, HD resolution background images and more. Stay tuned.
What's new in v8.00 RC1:
Legend :
"*" = New
"+" = Change
"-" = Fix
New :
* Support for Windows 7 (or newer) task bar progress button. Using the new
Taskbar settings interface (Adv. Options / Interface / Task Bar),
you can enable a progress bar that shows either the current media play
position or your position within the playlist.
* Support for Windows 7 (or newer) Task lists. Using the new Taskbar tasks
interface (Adv. Options / Interface / Task Bar), you can assign any
standard Zoom Player function to the Task Bar button.
* Support for Windows Vista (or newer) mouse wheel left/right Tilt
(Adv. Options / Interface / Mouse / Mouse Wheel).
You can choose between using the mouse wheel tilt for left/right
navigation in menus or assign a Zoom Player function to the right
and left tilt motions.
* Support for Windows Vista (or newer) AutoPlay handlers, allowing
you to select Zoom Player from the Windows Control Panel AutoPlay
configuration dialog. Supported auto play handlers include CD, VCD,
SVCD, DVD and Blu-Ray discs.
* New virtual-keyboard navigation interface. Used for renaming files
through the media library and file browsing navigation interfaces.
The virtual-keyboard layout is fully scriptable and supports
native (unicode) language input.
* New Out of Process Automation interface API that allows you to
control Zoom Player through the COM inter-process interface.
A sample application will be posted on the web site and forum.
* The fullscreen Station navigation interface has been redesigned.
All previous stations have been moved into a "Favorites" category.
Beyond your favorites, you can now browse through radio genres
downloaded from the internet and play stations directly.
* The "Filter List" section of the Media Library and File Browsing
fullscreen navigation interface now includes an option to show
"All Files".
* The Media Library Category editor has been redesigned for greater
simplicity and clarity and is now fully keyboard accessible, no longer
requiring mouse access.
* The Skin selection dialog has been redesigned for greater simplicity
and clarity and is now fully keyboard accessible, no longer requiring
mouse access.
* The GoTo time/Chapter editor dialog is now fully keyboard accessible,
no longer requiring mouse access.
* The play history dialog is now fully keyboard accessible, no longer
requiring mouse access.
* You can now select FFDShow DXVA (hardware assisted) decoding
for H.264 and VC1.
There are a lot of restrictions when using DXVA. Not all video renderers
are supported, subtitles wont display, etc... The minimum hardware
requirement is NVIDIA 8xxx series cards or ATI 4xxx series cards.
For more information, visit the ffdshow development thread over
at the doom9 forums : http://forum.doom9.org
* The installer now includes an icon library for the most popular file
formats supported by Zoom Player. On initial install, the new
icons are applied automatically.
* The RingTone creation dialog has been improved:
1. You can manually modify the Start/Stop positions.
2. You can seek to the start/stop positions.
3. You can seek in the player and use the current media position
as the start/stop positions.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface) allowing you to password protect
the options dialog. For additional security, the password is kept in an
encrypted form.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface) that prevents the Zoom Player
user interface from opening on a disabled (turned-off) monitor. Enabled
by default, the main user interface is moved to the primary monitor
when running Zoom Player on a disabled monitor.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Mouse / Settings) forcing a more
aggressive Mouse Cursor hiding code. The mouse cursor should no longer pop-up
even when background applications steal focus from the player.
This setting is enabled by default. If it causes problems with your mouse
cursor hiding too much, it can be disabled.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display / Audio Tags /
Paths & Script) allowing you to enable/disable the aspect ratio for
the default folder image. This is useful when the default folder image
is an abstract picture (as the included default image is).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)
that controls whether the system 'Pictures, Music and Video' library
folders are listed in the media library navigation interface
(enabled by default).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)
allowing you to prevent access to the main navigation interface from all
other navigation interfaces.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)
allowing you to completely prevent access to the navigation interfaces
function sub-menus.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Position & Size) allowing to
prevent exiting Fullscreen / Zoom mode.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Smart Play) allowing you to
choose whether Zoom Player or Windows selects the Audio/Video renderers
when a file extension is selected for Smart Play exclusion.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Blu-Ray) allowing you to
add secondary Blu-Ray movie tracks (based on their duration) to the
playlist automatically (by default, 21minutes or longer).
Newly added tracks are sorted by duration, longest track listed first.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / DVD / DVD Settings) allowing you
to control the way the player seeks in DVD mode. Since DVD seeking
can be slow, by default Delayed seeking is used so the actual seek
is performed only after 1-2 seconds, allowing you to drag the timeline
without actually seeking until you let go of the mouse cursor.
However, if you would like the seeking to be instantaneous, you can
now disable the delayed seek.
* New Settings (Adv. Options / Playback / Controls) allowing you to specify
the maximum play rate (used with the "fnIncRateEx" and "fnDecRateEx"
functions) and the play rate step value (default 10%).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Controls) that mutes the audio for
two seconds when using the seek forward and seek backward functions (to
prevent garbled audio as the video is seeked frequently).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Controls) that instructs
Zoom Player to close itself if the stop button/function is called.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / File Format Association / File Extensions)
allowing you to only show or use the first part in a Multi-Part
RAR archive.
For example "myarchive.part1.rar" will display while "myarchive.part2.rar"
and "myarchive.part999.rar" wont display.
* The Zoom Player facebook page is now accessible through the options dialog,
allowing you to view the latest Zoom Player news and updates.
* Blu-Ray subtitles are now supported when using FFDShow as the
subtitle renderer.
* New function "fnZoomInLevel" which cycles through 4 Zoom-in levels (16.6%,
33.3%, 50% and 100%). The keyboard macro is Alt+Ctrl+'Z'.
* New function "fnIncRateEx" which increases the play rate by a user specified
value (10% by default). The keyboard macro is Alt+Ctrl+'.'.
* New function "fnDecRateEx" which decreases the play rate by a user specified
value (10% by default). The keyboard macro is Alt+Ctrl+','.
* New function "fnResetWindows" which resets the user interface windows to
their default location. This function is accessible by right-clicking
the Zoom Player task-bar button.
* You can now play and associate Blu-Ray decrypted ".mpls" Playlist files.
This means that multi-part Blu-Ray movies (a Blu-Ray movie composed of
several ".M2TS" media files) can now be played as one seamless media.
* The Skin Script "CreateExButton" function can now execute external
files and open URLs in your browser.
* New Skin Script "InstallFont" command which allows you to use font files
in your skin without having to register them with Windows first.
* New navigation skin script variable "PathHeightKey" allowing you to
set the height of the keyboard entry box in the virtual keyboard navigation
interface.
* New navigation skin script variables controlling the virtual keyboard
text colors:
KeyActive = Active state of the virtual keyboard interface
KeyInactive = Inactive state of the virtual keyboard interface
KeyEditActive = Active state of the virtual keyboard edit box
KeyEditInactive = Inactive state of the virtual keyboard edit box
KeyKeyActive = Active key virtual keyboard interface
For more information, see the default "Drapes.nav" script file in the
Zoom Player 'skin' folder.
* The WebServer Remote API now accepts a new "&play=[filename]" command,
allowing you to open files (and URLs) directly from the web browser.
* Media duration for "M2TS,MKA,MKV,MOV,MP4" files is now detected
automatically, to enable, click on the "Default" button at:
Adv. Options / File Format Association / File Extensions / Auto-Get Duration
* The screen saver date/time display and currently playing media display
layouts have been redesigned for better clarity. These changes also
fix the issue where the currently playing media display would alter
the font size depending on the length of the playing media name.
* Three new internal screen saver modes "Sinus Plasma", a Power Saving
version of "Sinus Plasma" (lower brightness) and a Power Saving
version of "Plasma Cloud".
* New "Open Subtitle File" option accessible through the right-click
context menu under the "Open" sub-menu.
* New "/SkinMedia", "/SkinAudio" and "/SkinDVD" command line parameters that
let you specify which skin should load directly from the command line.
Please note that this parameter must be called first (before "/Media",
"/DVD" or "/AudBar").
* Pressing the Ctrl+"A" keyboard macro with the playlist editor in focus
will now select all items in the list.
* Single-clicking an item in the playlist editor with items previously
selected will now clear the current selection and re-select only the
clicked item.
* Holding the "Shift" key in combination with the UP/DOWN arrow keys in
the playlist editor will now select the items above/below the current
selection without clearing the previously selected item(s).
* Holding the "Shift" key in combination with the PGUP/PGDN/Home/End keys
in the playlist editor will now select the items above/below the current
selection without clearing the previously selected item(s).
* The minimalistic skin modes (F6/F7 keyboard macros) for default Onyx skin
now switch the playlist layout to a minimalistic design.
* New "Filter Properties" button on the Smart Play Source and Splitter
configuration dialogs, allowing you to configure the selected filter
(if the filter allows it).
* The "Automatically check for player updates" setting now checks the
Install Center for codec/filter updates and notifies you if new/updated
components have been found.
* New Comm API message #1852 which instructs the currently playing
media to close.
* New Comm API message #2650 which enables you to position the player window.
* Embedded Windows Bitmap (.BMP) format album art is now supported.
Changes :
+ We are no longer using an EXE compressor, which means that the Zoom Player
EXE files will be larger, but you wont get any false-positive virus warnings.
+ The Install Center has been redesigned for greater simplicity and clarity.
+ The "Show Date and Time" (Alt+Ctrl+"D") clock function has been modified
so that it displays or hides the clock instead of just popping the clock
through the standard OSD messages for a few seconds.
The clock display is transparent, allowing you to see behind the
text and in Windows Vista and newer, the text is slightly translucent.
+ When the "Auto-Play media file when opened" is disabled, the first
video frame is now displayed.
+ The "Clear History" (Adv. Options / Playback / History) now erases the
play history file.
+ Browsing the SHOUTcast station directory has been disabled as AOL
(Owner of the SHOUTcast directory) no longer allows free access to the
directory and makes draconian demands for this access.
+ Tuning in to a radio station directly from the SHOUTcast.com web site
is now possible. All you need to do is select the "TUNE IN" option.
You may be promoted to play through the browser
or through the player, make sure to select the player.
Your browser may prompt you for the application to open the playlist,
make sure to select Zoom Player.
+ Improved Blu-Ray main movie detection with some titles.
+ You can now right-click play history entries to copy them into the
system clipboard.
+ When opening an MMS stream, the buffering percentage value
is now displayed.
+ When the 4:3/16:9 Zoom compensation or one of the Zoom-in levels are
enabled, playing new media content displays an OSD notification letting
you know that Zoom mode is enabled (this notification will not show if
you specifically set a viewing region that is not fullscreen).
+ If the "Pause playback when opening file browsing interfaces with a
video playing" setting is enabled, opening the play history navigation
interface now pauses the video.
+ The "View" section of the media library and file browser navigation
interfaces has been renamed to "Filter List".
+ The default process priority given to Zoom Player is now set to
"Above Normal" by default when running under Windows 2000 or newer.
Previous users of Zoom Player should note that their previous
value for this setting has been reset to the new default.
+ When clicking on an extension's icon in the Options Dialog's file
association section or clicking the "Apply Icon to Selected Extensions"
button, now applies an extension-specific icon taken from the default
icon library that ships with Zoom Player.
+ On first showing, the Playlist Editor dialog and the Equalizer dialog
appear in a docked position rather than in the top left corner of the
screen.
+ The default values for the internal screen saver have been changed
and the screen saver is now enabled by default after 30 minutes of
idle activity.
+ The Internal screen saver mode setting has been reset.
+ The default visible buttons on the control bar have been changed.
+ The default values for the Arrow keys have been changed:
Te LEFT/RIGHT keys are used to seek 20 seconds backward/forward.
The UP key opens the Media Library navigation interface.
The DOWN key opens the Playlist navigation interface.
The previous defaults can be restored through the Advanced Options dialog.
+ The default fullscreen navigation interfaces appearing in the main (root)
navigation interface have been changed.
+ The Equalizer Magnetize state is now enabled by default.
+ The Equalizer Magnetize state now positions the equalizer interface
centered to the bottom or top of the main user interface (depending on
space). Previously, the equalizer interface was aligned to the left
edge of the main user interface.
+ The "Pause playback when opening file browsing interfaces with a video
playing" setting is now enabled by default.
+ The "Use Media Title if Available" Playlist setting is now
enabled by default.
+ Pressing "D" to open the Video Decoder configuration dialog now opens
FFDShow's Video Decoder configuration dialog if no media is playing.
+ Pressing Alt+"A" to open the Audio Decoder configuration dialog now opens
FFDShow's Audio Decoder configuration dialog if no media is playing.
+ The Advanced Option's "Show fullscreen Color Controls when values are
changed through the keyboard macros" setting has been moved to
"Playback / Video / Colors".
+ The Advanced Option's "Audio Tags (ID3)" has been renamed to
"Audio Images & Tags".
+ The Advanced Option's "Enlarge folder image to fit Video Area, otherwise
Center and Shrink only" setting has been moved to "Interface / On Screen
Display / Audio Images & Tags".
+ The Advanced Option's "Load folder image file" setting has been renamed
to "Load external folder image file" and moved to "Interface / On Screen
Display / Audio Images & Tags".
+ The "Draw Folder (Background) Image under "Adv. Options / Interface /
On Screen Display / Audio Images & Tags" setting has been renamed to
"Draw embedded background image". In addition, a fix was made so
that disabling this setting, no longer disables folder images from
loading.
+ The Zoom In/Out functions will now display the video display resolution
in a pop-up window.
+ All references to "Skip, Jump, Seek" functions have been replaced with
"Short Seek, Medium Seek, Long Seek".
+ Some of the options dialog entries have been rephrased for clarity.
+ The default window size is now slightly bigger to account for the
overall increase in resolution of entry level monitors sold today.
+ Automatically restoring media volume levels from history is now disabled
by default. You can re-enable these settings through the
advanced options dialog.
Fixes :
- Depending on your version of windows and if UAC is enabled, the file
association options dialog would show incorrect information (wrong
icon, or indicate that Zoom Player was associated with the extension
even if it wasn't).
- CD Audio Playback was broken when used in Windows 7.
- There was a problem with Windows 7 hiding the Zoom Player tray icon
even when setting the icon to always show. This was caused by the
tool-tip for the icon containing the playing file name, which differs
greatly between multiple files. To fix this issue, 'Zoom Player' is
now displayed before the playing file name.
- Dragging the player window by clicking "Ctrl + Left mouse button" (or
other configured setting) within the video area was broken in Windows
Vista and Windows 7 when certain video renderer were used (VMR7/VMR9/
Haali/MadVR). Now there's a workaround in place that ensures the window
is dragged to the correct location (with minor flickering at times).
- The "Adv. Options / Interface / Display - Enlarge folder image to fit
video area" setting now performs as expected.
- The "/OpenDrive" command line parameter did not detect Blu-Ray drives
properly.
- The "Prefer HD content as the main movie if the track duration is
longer than (minutes)" Blu-Ray setting didn't compare the track time
correctly.
- The fullscreen monitor (Adv. Options / System) value would get reset
if the selected monitor was no longer available (the monitor was off).
The value is now preserved and if the monitor is not available,
the player will go fullscreen on the primary monitor.
- When playing DVR-MS files, the "Stop" function didn't seek to the
beginning of the media file.
- Pressing "R" to cycle through the aspect ratio modes no longer
resizes the player window if "Auto-Size User Interface to maintain
Video Aspect Ratio" is enabled. If you try to move or resize the
window after setting the Aspect Ratio, it will snap into shape.
- The right-click Open URL feature is now better adapted to opening
SHOUTcast radio stations using the following format:
http://yp.shoutcast....station.pls?id=[number]
- If Smart Play was disabled, Zoom Player would not use the selected
Audio Renderer if the "MPC Audio Renderer" was installed and not chosen.
- When using the "Disable Smart Play for files with the following extensions"
feature, the selected Audio and Video renderers weren't used, but rather
windows (DirectShow) selected its own renderers. Now, you can select
if you want Zoom Player or Windows to select the renderers (see above).
- Trying to play a DVD's "VIDEO_TS.IFO" file in media mode would not
remove the background image before starting to play the DVD.
- You can now seek, pause and play streaming MMS content.
- The Open-URL dialog was limited to 255 characters.
- The next/previous chapter and track functions can now continue
to the next file in the directory when a file fails to load.
- When a custom video renderer does not support the "IBasicVideo2"
interface, the Derived aspect ratio value is taken from the
source video aspect ratio.
- The "xvid" profile is no longer used to verify that SmartPlay
is properly configured.
- When using FFDShow as the Subtitle renderer, subtitles are now
ordered alphabetically.
- Fixed a crash when using the FFDShow Subtitle renderer.
- Fixed a crash when trying to play MP3/FLAC/APE audio files with an
embedded "BMP" album art image.
- Fixed a list index out of bounds crash when Random Play was enabled and
the "On Playlist Complete" setting was not set to "Auto Replay".
- Fixed an "Out of Resources" crash when trying to set the Zoom
resolution to a extremely high value (over 16384x16384, which is
now the limit).
- When playing audio media, the player now uses folder or embedded images
as the pseudo video resolution for functions that require it (such as
auto-sizing the user interface to fit the source video resolution).
- Auto-Correction of video aspect ratio is no longer applied when viewing
stand alone, folder and embedded images.
- Switching between audio and media modes after playing an audio file would
show remnants of the TAG display in the GUI window if the audio file was
closed.
- Switching Stay On Top on/off followed by pressing the "Enter" key would
reload the currently playing media instead of the action assigned to the
"Enter" key.
- You can now play URLs from the Play History dialog.
- You can now play URLs from the command line if Zoom Player is
currently running.
- There is no longer a limit of 255 character when trying to open a URL
or file from the command line while Zoom Player is currently running.
- When first loading, the keyboard focus is now set to the main player
user interface rather than secondary interfaces (Playlist editor,
Equalizer).
- When the "On Playlist Complete" setting is set to close Zoom Player
or shutdown the computer, the action is no longer performed if the
options dialog is open.
- When the "Auto-Play next file in the playlist" setting was disabled,
pressing Play when reaching the end of a media file would not perform
the "On Playlist Complete" event.
- When the "Move the Playlist Editor display to follow the currently
playing media file" setting was enabled, the playlist tried to change
position and follow a new item even if the new item was already visible.
- When setting the screen saver mode to "Image SlideShow", re-opening
the options dialog would disable the Image Directory browse button.
- When switching between different screen saver modes, the mode switch
would not work well if you didn't restart the player.
- When a language or custom context menu script used unicode characters
for sub-menus, the root menu name was not properly identified and sub-menu
items did not show up.
- When using a language pack, some translated window titles using unicode
characters would appear as "????"
- Using the "Del" keyboard macro to delete the currently playing media
now removes the entry from the file browsing navigation interface cache.
- Deleting the default "Drapes" navigation skin, will now allow you to
select other navigation skins when listed as the first entry in the
skin selection dialog.
- Loading image files with the internal image decoder, depending on the
image's apsect ratio, could display in the wrong aspect ratio if the
"Auto-Fix Aspect Ratio for badly encoded content" setting was enabled.
- The A-B Repeat and RingTone creation timeline highlights were not updated
properly on the Control Bar's timeline.
- Ejecting certain drive types would cause Zoom Player to stop the currently
playing media even if the media was not on the ejected drive.
- The "Open the Options Dialog on the active monitor" setting wasn't being
applied to the Basic Options dialog.
- When using FFDShow as the Subtitle renderer while using a video
decoder other than FFDShow, combining this setup with Haali Video Renderer,
would result in a pin connection error.
- Skins with no hint value for the Volume/Balance/Play Rate bars showed
unrelated hint text.
- Skins with no playlist skinned would show the default onyx skin for
the playlist interface with broken button transparency (red borders).
- Selecting a skin or applying a skin tint from the skin selection dialog
no longer causes the player window to pop over and obscure the skin selection
dialog.
- Installing a Skin file would ask you to open the Skin selection dialog
even if it was already open.
- Fixed the "FolderImage" skin script code function that got broken in v7.
- When sorting by Size in the Media Library and File Browsing fullscreen
navigation interfaces, the "Play all files in this Directory" entry
was listed before the "Previous Directory" entry.
- With "Stay on Top" enabled along with "Screen-Align the Control Bar to"
set to either Top or Bottom of the screen, the control bar would lose
it's on-top status and would disappear if you clicked the video area
or if a new media loaded.
- Performing a legacy install (where all installed files are placed in a
single folder) no longer warns you of a problematic installation if
UAC (User Account Control) is enabled and you installed under a
directory other than the "Program Files" directory.
As well as the above, the warning dialog now contains an additional
checkbox to dismiss it from showing on future runs.
- The main application window should now appear in Flip3D under
Windows Vista and Windows 7.
- With "Adv. Options / On Screen Display / Actions - Show Time Position Over
Timeline" enabled, pressing Alt+F4 would close the position window rather
than the player window.
--- End.
