29 replies to this topic

[bLight]

Release Candidate 1 had several issues which required a quick fix. Release Candidate 2 adds several important fixes and if you were using RC1, it is highly recommended you upgrade.

If you were previously using Release Candidate 1 for DVD Playback, Open the Advanced Options dialog, go to the DVD Setup dialog and double check that the Audio/Video Decoders and the DVD Navigator are selected.

Changes from RC1 :

+ The F1 keyboard macro now opens the key-help dialog with the
   focus on the search field.

 - DVD Video/Audio Decoder and Navigator selection would not
   be remembered under certain conditions.

 - Using the Configure buttons on the Customized Media Playback
   filter listings would cause the dialogs to appear over and
   over again in a loop.

 - The Internal JPEG Decoder would not display JPEG images when
   certain conditions were met.

 - Loading JPEG images with a slideshow value of 0 will now stay
   on the same image until next track is called or another image
   is loaded manually.

 - Values for DVD Auto-AR external program execute would not save.

 - Value for External Audio Track path would not save.

 - Value for Internal JPEG Image Decoder would not save.

 - Could not save a Scene-Cut file for DVD discs if they were not
   previously played.

 - Background image would not load properly under some conditions.

Changes from Beta 3:

* 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 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".

 * New TCP/IP external control interface.  This interface is still
   experimental. The interface is similar to the SendMessage code
   currently in use, but allows you to send control information to
   Zoom Player and can be accessed accross a network.

   By default, it is set to off and can be enabled at
   "Advanced Options / Values / Interface" where a connection port
   can also be selected.

 * 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 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.

 * The DVD AutoAR feature can now execute an external program when
   a DVD Aspect Ratio mode changes.

 * New "/LOCKFS" command line parameter which locks Zoom Player in
   fullscreen mode (useful for Kiosk-Type operation).

 * New Setting (Options / DVD Setup) allowing you to hide the
   Audio/Video decoder profiles that are not currently registered
   on your computer.

 * New Settings (Advanced Options / Settings / Windows Media) allowing
   you to use AC3 Filter as an Audio Post-Processor for Windows Media
   DRM content.  Make sure you have PCM input enabled in the AC3 Filter
   property page, otherwise it won't work.

 * 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 Color Selection for Navigators Internal, External and Select
   Framing Colors (Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators).

 * 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.

 * The LCD interface has been extended and can now be used to call
   Zoom Player standard and extended functions.

 * Two new ID3 display tags "<Length>" returning the length of the
   currently playing file and "<PlayListTotal>" returning the total
   duration for the entire play list.

 * 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.

 * New Keyboard Macro (Shift+"V") to enable/disable the Internal
   Screen Saver.  This macro uses the new "fnSSaverToggle" function.

 + Zoom Player can now acquire WMV DRM Auto-Licenses as long as WMP has
   individualized the system (usually happens when originally playing
   DRM content).

 + Zoom Player now supports VMR7 Windowed playback in Customized Media
   mode.  If you previously used a customized renderer, make sure to
   update your setting.

 + You can now use VMR7 and Overlay Mixer when playing WMV DRM content.

 + Subtitles can now be viewed with WMV DRM content using DirectVobSub.

 + 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 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.

 - 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).

 - Clicking on a missing format link on the Basic Options dialog would
   throw a protection fault error.

 - 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.

 - The "/TRAILER", "/KEY" and "/KEYDVD" command line parameters were
   broken.

 - The gradient skin functions were giving bad results.

 - 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.

Download Zoom Player v4.00 Release Candidate 2 here.

[BangoO]

BangoO:
You're right... But there's not much I can do about it. Microsoft never designed WMV-HD to work with the Overlay Mixer. I tried to make it work.

As the other topic is locked, let's continue on this one
I don't know whether MS designed WMV-HD to work with the overlay or not, but the fact is that it works with any WMV-HD file that is not DRM. So I guess there should be a way to make it work with DRM file... it's a really important issue as you can't setup your image using VMR7 or WMR9 as well as if you use the overlay.

Thx

[bLight]

BangoO:
Not sure what you mean by setup your image... the DRM graph is not the same as a non-DRM graph. It uses a different structure. It's possible that if the CPU overloads it freezes the image. (DRM take about 20-25% more CPU). VMR7/9 use a different structure than the overlay mixer and perhaps may not be as suseptable to this issue.

[filewalker]

Jpeg in fullscreen works now perfectly, slideshow value of 0 works, too.

Thanks for the fast bugfix!

[Suzi]

Hi Blight:

The quality of JPEG images is amazing now in ZP.
But, it crushes almost in every image change with the following error message.

[BangoO]

BangoO:
Not sure what you mean by setup your image... the DRM graph is not the same as a non-DRM graph. It uses a different structure. It's possible that if the CPU overloads it freezes the image. (DRM take about 20-25% more CPU). VMR7/9 use a different structure than the overlay mixer and perhaps may not be as suseptable to this issue.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for example, the gamma setup is only available in overlay.
CPU load goes up to 40% when it loads the file, then ZP freezes and the CPU load goes back to 0.

[bLight]

BangoO:
For me ZP itself doesn't freeze, only the image freezes... and CPU load as reported by task manager is completely bogus.

Suzi:
I just played over 100 images and couldn't reproduce this issue. Can you export your ZP settings, zip them up and post them here?

As far as quality, ZP uses a bilinear scaler to display these images where as most image viewers use near-neighbor scaler, which looks far worse. Especially when zooming in on images.

[BangoO]

Blight so it's seems like we don't have the same behaviour. But friends of mine have the same behaviour as mine so...

[bLight]

BangoO:
It may depend on your graphic card, I'm on an NVIDIA GF4 TI4200 using the latest official drivers.

[BangoO]

I have a Radeon 9700 Pro and all my friends have Radeon cards as well.
Maybe it gives you a hint ?

[Raistlin]

Pagat wrote:
1. A Mouse Cursor problem: Start a Video and go to Zoom-Mode. Close the player via Alt+F4. Double click on a video file in explorer to let ZP play that file (t should open in Zoom-Mode). Exit Zoom Mode via "Z". Now if you move the mouse cursor over the video- or timeline area it disappears. Enter and Exit Zoom Mode again: Mouse Cursor behaves normally (visible over video area).
Can anyone confirm this?

I confirm this, but unfortunately this bug is unstable, I cannot reproduce it as written above, but I experienced it many times by switching ZP from Zoom mode to Window mode, and my workaround is the same as Pagat's one.

Another bug: I have set "On Play complete" setting to "Auto Rewind", and it works for all media files except MOVs (I use QuickTime Alternative 1.32 for playing them) -- they always being auto replayed.

[bLight]

Raistlin:
I think the MOV thing is an issue with the quicktime activex component (Quicktime still doesn't have 100% functioning directshow filters).

BangoO:
There's nothing I can really do about it... it either work or it doesn't in this case. There's no magic pill I can throw at it.

[Suzi]

.....Can you export your ZP settings, zip them up and post them here?
......

Hi Blight:

When you say "ZP settings", I am not sure if you meant the reg files in " HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VirtuaMedia\.....".

If that is what it is I have posted them.

[JDean]

great work again Blight!

just one thing, when loading a picture in ZP and it is of a larger size than my screen resolution, it doesn't seem to fit itself to the screen when i go into fullscreening mode, it there an option to change this?

[BangoO]

BangoO:
There's nothing I can really do about it... it either work or it doesn't in this case. There's no magic pill I can throw at it.

Ok Blight, thx anyway

[netwolf]

BangoO:
There's nothing I can really do about it... it either work or it doesn't in this case.  There's no magic pill I can throw at it.

Well, what do you think about adding code that produces a little dump file ?

In case of a crash (which is caused by ZP, not any 3rd party filter or whatever...) users could zip and mail you this dump file and you could analyze and fix the problem

(that´s IMO the best way to fix crash related problems, which mostly are by their nature not reproducable on all systems)

[bLight]

JDean:
Options / Aspect Ratio -> Restrict to Height (but it may not be good for you for standard movies).

netwolf:
When the crashes are in some 3rd party code, ZP can't do anything about it, and when it's in ZP code, it shows a window and doesn't freeze...

[bLight]

Suzi:
I cought the problem you have with JPEG, it's related to the "loop current file" mode in the play list editor.

[Suzi]

Thank you soooooooo much, Blight.
Disabling the "loop" solved the problem.


Now, ZP is great not only for video-player but as an image-viewer too. There is no picture quality lost no matter how much zooming is done.

But, when it comes to "smoothness" , there is a black-screen or a "glitch" between pictures.

So, is there something you can do or something I can do to get rid of the black-screen between pictures?

[bLight]

Suzi:
Not so much really, the blackscreen is the time it takes the image to load and resized... ZP can't keep the other image up as it's not built for image slideshow and requires the original image be destoryed first.