It took longer than I initially anticipated, but the time didn't go to waste.
The entire Inmatrix team with a big thumbs up to the closed beta volunteer team stepped up and together we've stomped dozens of bugs, some dating back years.
Stomping out bugs is time consuming. It requires multiple user reports to finely target the bug and testing on multiple systems to ensure the fix is stable, all of which taking plenty of time.
While we waited for the bug tracking data to pour in, we used the time well.
We declattered interfaces, improved workflow and made them fully keyboard accessible.
We then added long requested usability features, such as the ability to search through Zoom Player's massive array of features and settings accessible through the options dialog.
We enhanced the internal JPEG decoder to automatically rotate pictures based on orientation information embedded in JPEG files (most cameras support this function).
And this small list barely covers the surface.
With so many changes, enhancements and fixes in the code, there was an internal discussion on whether to release a final version, or a third release candidate.
I made the decision to issue another release candidate. I feel a few weeks of testing is warranted to ensure a smooth final release.
This will be the last beta prior to the final release.
Please take this time to test the new and updated features and verify that bugs are properly squashed.
Cheers,
..Yaron Gur
..Lead . Developer
Upgrade note:
Since this is not the final version, the navigation interface skins currently available for download on the website have yet to be updated.
Once the final version is released, we'll update the existing navigation interfaces for version 8.
If you have more questions on this subject, leave a post on the forum and our moderators will assist you.
Premium users:
If you've previously purchased "Zoom Player Premium", you can download version 8 here.
The premium version is being phased out, but as a gratitude to our loyal users, we're still providing existing users with a free upgrade path to version 8.
Download:
Click to visit the Zoom Player v8 Release Candidate 3 download page.
List of changes from v8 Release Candidate 2:
* The default media center navigation skin has been refreshed with a more
eye-pleasing colorset. You can download the old skin here:
http://skins.inmatrix.com
* You can now search the Options dialog to quickly bring up settings you
need changed.
* Zoom Player can now load ".xspf" IceCast streaming radio playlists.
You can now tune-in directly by clicking on an icecast station entry.
IceCast Station Directory:
http://dir.xiph.org/index.php
* You can now associate the ".xspf" IceCast streaming radio file extension.
* New "/SharePath:[Path]" command line parameter.
This Parameter sets the initial media sharing path.
The share path value allows external applications to instruct Zoom Player
to list and play media from the shared path folder from a remote location,
using Zoom Player's TCP/IP API.
* New settings (Adv. Options / Interface / Keyboard) allowing
you to set a keyboard/remote anti-repeat rate separately for navigation functions
(up/down/left/right/etc) and general functions (play/pause/etc).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / OSD / Actions) that extends the
visibility of OSD Action Pop-ups (Play/Pause/etc) by 38ms per character.
This allows the OSD to remain visible when longer text is displayed
(e.g. when renaming files).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation) allowing
you to override a navigation skin's font outline setting.
Disabling the navigation interfaces font-outline can speed up
interactivity on lower end systems.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback) that Auto-Rotate JPEG images according
to embedded EXIF data when using the internal image decoder.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video) that controls whether
Zoom Player should use MadVR's API to display the Control bar,
pop-up OSD (play/pause/etc) and Clock.
By enabling this setting, Fullscreen Exclusive mode is preserved when
displaying OSD elements.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / System) enabling the Guard Dog feature to
re-use the command line parameters Zoom Player was launched with.
* The "Background image base name" value (Adv. Options / Interface /
On Screen Display / Audio Images & Tags / Paths & Script" now accepts
masks. For example, you can use a value of "folder*" which will have
Zoom Player search for JPG/PNG/BMP folder images that start with "folder",
i.e. "folder_view.jpg".
* The activate chapter is now auto-highlighted when opening the chapter/bookmark
fullscreen navigation interface.
* With uTorrent v3 installed, you can now track download progress in the
media library and file browsing navigation interfaces for torrents
downloaded into a non-default directory.
* Zoom Player can now extract chapter information when using LAV Splitter.
While mainly used by Matroska (MKV) files, all format is supported as
long as LAV Splitter exposes the chapter interface.
* The Chapter editor dialog has been redesigned for clarity and ease of use.
* The play history dialog has been slightly tweaked for clarity.
* The Scene-Cut Editor dialog has been redesigned for clarity and ease of use.
* The Scene-Cut Editor dialog is now fully keyboard accessible.
* The Station Editor dialog is now fully keyboard accessible.
* The Station Browser dialog is now fully keyboard accessible.
* The Smart Play configuration dialogs are now fully keyboard accessible.
* The Playing Information dialog (Keyboard Macro "I") has been cleaned up
and the formats section text can now be copied to the clipboard.
* EXTINF (Duration/Title) data in M3U playlists is now supported.
* New TCP/IP API outbound message #6000, used to browse the shared
directories specified using the "/SharePath" command line parameter.
* New TCP/IP API outbound message #6010, used to add shared media files to
the playlist.
* New TCP/IP API outbound message #1920, used to notify that the playlist
has been cleared.
* New TCP/IP API message #2670, used to set the monitor used in
fullscreen mode.
* New TCP/IP API message #0100, used to Ping the player to check that it's
still responsive.
* New navigation skin scripts variables "ProgressActive", "SizeColor",
"SizeActive" used to specify the color states when displaying file
sizes and progress states.
* New navigation skin scripts variable "KeyEditOutline" controlling whether
the virtual keyboard text edit is outlined.
* New navigation skin scripts variables controling the layout of the
virtual keyboard interface:
KeyXOfs = Key-List X-Offset (Percent of Interface Width)
KeyYOfs = Key-List Y-Offset (Percent of Interface Height)
KeyHeight = Key-List Height (Percent of Interface Height)
KeyWidth = Key-List Width (Percent of Interface Width)
KeyPHeight = Height of path/filename area
KeyPWidth = Path Width (Percent of Interface Width)
KeyPXOfs = Path X-Offset (Percent of Interface Width)
KeyPYOfs = Path Y-Offset (Percent of Interface Height)
* FRAPS (FPS1) videos can now be played. You may need to enable FRAPS/FPS1
support in FFDShow's codec configuration dialog to enable decoding.
* New MadVR H.264, VC1 and MPEG2 decoding smart play profiles.
Requires MadVR 0.69 or newer with the decoding options enabled.
* New ADPCM audio decoder Smart Play profile.
* New Nellymoser audio decoder Smart Play profile.
* You can now search the Station Browser dialog.
* The configuration path (registry or file based) and the current data directory
are now listed on the Options Dialog's 'About' page.
+ When running Window XP (or newer), Zoom Player now uses a Natural Sorting
algorithm rather than the default ASCII Sorting.
For example, using ASCII sorting, files would be listed as:
1.avi
10.avi
2.avi
3.avi
With Natural sorting, the same files would be listed as:
1.avi
2.avi
3.avi
10.avi
+ The default navigation skin no longer uses font-outline. The design doesn't
really require it and the performance benefits merit the change.
You now have the option to override the navigation interface's font-outline
in case you're not satisfied with the change.
+ You will now be prompted to restore the Play History database from a backup
if Zoom Player detects that the database may be corrupted (due to a system
crash).
+ The Action Pop-up OSD auto-hide is now more accurate (250ms vs
the previous 1000ms).
+ The Fusion skin's control bar now contains a close button and a few other
minor changes.
+ Matroska (MKV) chapters read using the MPC Matroska splitter are now
automatically converted to ZP chapters. Enabling chapter tracking and
chapter edit to an external chapter file (override internal chapters).
+ The Station Browser dialog can now be translated to other languages.
+ Now that the "Goto Time" dialog and the "Chapter/Bookmark editor" were
combined into one interface. Using the GoTo time function opens the
dialog with the keyboard focus on the Time entry box and the Chapter
editor function opens the dialog with the keyboard focus on the
Chapter Name entry box.
+ The "Context Menu" fullscreen navigation interface has been renamed
"Extended Menu".
+ The Extended Menu fullscreen navigation interface has been brought
in line with the rest of the navigation interfaces and now displays
icons instead of ASCII characters to represent folders/active state.
+ The Next/Previous chapter functions will now update the fullscreen
chapter navigation interface if it's currently visible.
+ Cleaned up a few more streaming radio stations.
+ The Zoom-In/Zoom-Out (+/- keypad keys) functions when used in windowed
mode now snaps the player window back into the monitor's work area if the
zoom function partially moves the player window off-screen.
+ Zoom Player no longer lists the ".DAT" extension for file association.
This extension was used by VCD discs, which are no longer popular.
Combined with the fact that the ".DAT" extension is somewhat generic
and used by other applications for DATA storage, it was decided that
removing this extension would increase stability.
+ You can delete the Install Center cache by clicking on the Install Center
"Options" button.
+ TCP/IP API change to message #1100. Instead of listing whatever the
timeline display is showing, it now always shows [Position / Duration].
For example:
00:00:12 / 01:02:35
You can request an #1100 message output by sending an #1100 message
with a parameter value of "2".
+ TCP/IP API change to message #3000. Each line of the returned value is now
separated by the "|" character rather than a new line (CRLF) which would
complicate parsing.
+ The "exInterface" extended function can now discretely enable/disable
the pop-up OSD messages.
+ The color-tinting skin values have been reduced to a more reasonable
-160..160 range.
+ The PlayListData's skinning function "FontSpace" variable is now
calculated automatically. Any value supplied by the skin is ignored.
+ The "Show Smart Play graph creation errors" will now include the
smart play profile name as part of the error message.
+ The "Show currently playing title on the Task Bar button and the Tray Icon",
"Blank non-Playing Monitors while in Fullscreen / Zoom mode" and
"Show "Places" in Open / Save Dialogs" settings have moved from
"Adv. Options / System" to "Adv. Options / Interface".
+ The "Show Time Seek Position Over Timeline" setting has moved from
"Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display / Actions" to
"Adv. Options / Interface / Control Bar / Timeline Area".
+ The "File Browser 'Network / Disk' mapping" interface has moved under
"Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Paths"
- Fixed compatibility with uTorrent v3.
- Fixed the following visual glitches when a high DPI system font is used:
1. The options dialog "File Association" icons did not display correctly.
2. The "Add Filter" dialog's legend section did not draw correctly.
3. Some text was truncated in the options dialog.
4. The station manager station list items were partially cropped.
5. The skin selector skin list items were partially cropped.
6. The Install Center items were partially cropped.
7. The Smart Play Source, Splitter and Decoder configuration dialogs
cropped some of the displayed entries.
8. The Smart Play filter blacklist cropped some of the displayed entries.
9. The Options dialog archive playback extension list cropped some of the
displayed entries.
10. The registered filter manager dialog was improperly sized to the point
where buttons could overlap.
- Exporting Zoom Player's setting from the options dialog, would fail if
UAC is enabled.
- The ID3/TAG display used the character set (used to convert ANSI to
Unicode) defined by the Navigation font instead of the ID3/TAG font.
- Opening files from the command line would cause the file path to be modified
to uppercase, breaking playback from Linux based NAS devices.
- The Zoom Player Install Center auto-configuration did not work on systems
with UAC enabled or limited account access.
- When the "Auto-Size User Interface to fit Source Video Resolution" setting
is enabled, opening a media file with an image resolution larger than the
current screen, now limits the image resolution to the screen's resolution.
If the new resolution causes the player window to resize itself beyond
the screen's resolution, the player window will be pulled back into the
screen automatically.
- When setting a large font for the playlist editor or setting a higher
Font DPI value for windows as whole, the playlist fonts would become
truncated at the bottom.
- When using the Media Library or File Browsing fullscreen navigation
interfaces, using the "Add to Playlist" function no longer adds
media files that are not selected if the "Auto-Part Loader" function
is enabled.
- Fixed a rare 'List index out of bounds' error when deleting items from
the playlist.
- The Adjust Image (formally "image resize") and Image Blanking fullscreen
navigation interfaces were incorrectly affected by the "Navigation Line Count"
setting.
- The "Click here to search list" text in the playlist editor could overlap
the scroll widget if the playlist editor font was large enough.
- Trying to open a ".lnk" ShortCut file that pointed to a folder would show
an error message instead of opening the folder's content.
- Using the Station Edit button would not display the edited station
type correctly (would always show 'Radio').
- TCP/IP API Message #1810 (Request Play List), did not implement a separator
character between each media entry, making it harder to parse.
Now each entry is separated by the ">" character.
- TCP/IP API Message #1811 (Playlist items changed) was not being
triggered on every playlist change.
- An LPCM sub-type was accidently listed under the AC3 audio decoder profile.
- When disabling "Draw Text Background" for Audio TAG display, the bottom
line (usually the "YEAR" field) would get cropped out.
- Fixed a memory leak when trying to open corrupted JPEG/PNG images or
JPEG images in the CYMK print format (which is not supported).
- The "Switch resolution on Fullscreen" setting did not perform as expected.
- Fixed crashes related to corrupt language files.
- The "Null" filter no longer appears as Unregistered.
- When using ".CUE" files as chapter files, the chapter/track name did not
import properly when the CUE file was ASCII encoded and using a non-default
character set (i.e. Russian).
- The Play History stored the played files in lower case instead of their
original case.
- The Stop/Resume function didn't work if stop was pressed in the first 3
seconds of playback.
