As you can see from the change list below, this new build brings with it a lot of new features, enhancements and fixes.
We've went through an exhaustive internal testing phase which helped squash a lot of long standing issues. We've also redesigned many interfaces to make them simpler and more intuitive.
Give it a try! (download)
Change list from RC1:
* Zoom Player can detect a Blu-Ray disc structure, parse the Blu-Ray playlist and automatically load the longest video in the playlist (which is assumed to be the main movie). Thanks Christophe. This feature can be accessed through several ways: 1. Switching to DVD Mode and pressing Play. 2. Opening the Drive (through the right-click menu). 3. Opening the BluRay folder. 4. Opening the "index.bdmv" file, which is now listed in the various file browsing dialogs. This feature is limited to Zoom Player Home MAX. * The default skin's Control Bar now includes a pop-up volume window, allowing you to more accurately and easily set the volume levels while fullscreen. * The "Remember the last Media Position" setting has now been overhauled into its own separate "History" sub-section under the "Playback" section within the advanced options dialog. * The "Remember the last Media Position" setting has been split in two, with a setting for "Retain Media Playback History" and a setting for "Automatically restore last media position on replay". This gives more flexibility as to which aspects of playback should be restored when replaying a media file. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / History) which controls whether the last play time and date is saved for the playing media. If disabled, the play date is not saved and the playing item will not be listed in the play history and play history navigation interfaces. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / History) which controls whether the audio volume should be restored to its the previous level when replaying the media file. With this setting enabled, the audio volume level is retained for every media file played within the Playback History retention period (default is 30 days). * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / History) which controls whether the audio volume should be restored to its the previous level when replaying audio-only files. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video) allowing you to disable Zoom Player control over FFDShow's video Sharpening values. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video) allowing you to disable Zoom Player control over FFDShow's video DeInterlacing values. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video) allowing you to disable VMR7's mixing mode (can fix VMR7 issues with some hardware). * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Audio) allowing you to link the 'Volume Up'/'Volume Down' functions to the Equalizer PreAmp function so when the volume level reaches 100% and you continue using the 'Volume Up' function, the Equalizer PreAmp value is increased. Clicking volume down will first reduce the PreAmp value and when the PreAmp value reaches its previous level, the volume level is reduced. Setting the volume level through other means, will reset the PreAmp value to its previous level. PreAmp is a digital amplifier function which can reduce audio quality if the audio recording volume is normal, but can be very useful if the original recording volume is low. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface) allowing you to set the player to stay on top of other applications when switching to audio mode (and restoring a normal window state after returning to media mode). * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Position & Size) affecting the "Auto-Size User Interface to fit Source Video Resolution". When enabled, only the user interface height is adjusted. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation) allowing you to set the navigation scroll acceleration speed. After some tweaking, the default value has been sped up to "Very Fast" scrolling. The previous default value was "Average". * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation) allowing you to set the navigation scroll acceleration reset time in MS. The new default value is 300ms, in v6 the fixed value was 500ms. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings) allowing keyboard input to be used for Quickly Searching in many of the navigation interfaces. This setting is enabled by default. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation) allowing you to specify if keyboard searches are matched against the start of the line or any position in the line. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation) allowing you to set the keyboard input timeout (a value in MS indicating how much time should pass before the search query is reset). * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / DVD / DVD Settings) that determines whether Zoom Player searches only CD devices (CD/DVD/BluRay/etc...) or all drives for content when pressing play in DVD Mode. Default is to only scan CD devices, but if you map network-shares as drives, you may want to turn this setting off. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video / Subtitles) allowing you to select whether Zoom Player disables FFDShow subtitle rendering when DirectVobSub is used as the Preferred Subtitle Renderer. By default, FFDShow subtitle renderer is disabled when using DirectVobSub. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video / Colors) which allows you to select whether FFDShow should be used for software color control. * New Function (Alt+Shift+"Z") which compensates for badly encoded widescreen (16:9) content that is encoded in fullscreen (4:3) format by Zooming 33% into the Video (and returning to the previous video position when called a second time). This function will also view widescreen (16:9) content as fullscreen on fullscreen (4:3) Monitors/TVs by Zooming in and cropping the left/right sides of the video. * New Function (Ctrl+"E") allowing you to create Ring Tones by selecting a start and a stop position in many supported audio/video formats and extract the selected section in MP3/ACC formats supported by most mobile phones. This feature requires the FFMPEG components installed on your system (which is available through the Install Center application). * New Function (Alt+Shift+"W") to activate the White Wash screen-burn repair directly instead of accessing the function through the patterns function. * The File Browser, Media Library and Playlist fullscreen navigation interfaces "Select" function has been expanded to allow selecting "Select all matching multi-part files", "All Audio", "All Pictures", "All Video" and "All matching the currently highlighted file Type" (file extension). * The File Browser and Media Library fullscreen navigation interfaces can now access a "View" function which brings up a selection of files/information to view in the file list: 1. File Size 2. File Extension 3. Subtitle files 4. Archive files * Pressing Right with the "Add to Playlist" function highlighted in the File Browser or Media Library fullscreen navigation interfaces will now take you to the Playlist navigation. Pressing left from the playlist navigator will take you back to the original navigation interface (either file browser or media library). * New "Go to top of list" fullscreen navigation function (Applies to the Playlist, File Browser and Media Library interfaces). * The Advanced Playlist Control interface has been redesigned to be more intuitive. * The Play History fullscreen navigation interface implements a new function interface (accessible by clicking right). The functions are: 1. Erase Completely erase the selected item. 2. Hide Hide the selected item, but keep media information to maintain functionality (Last media position, volume). 3. Go to top of list Moves the focus to the top of the history list. * Right-Clicking the Equalizer's bars will now reset each bar clicked to its default value. * Hovering the mouse cursor over an Equalizer bar now shows its exact value. * New "/WinName" command line parameter allowing you to set the Zoom Player Window Name. For example: zplayer.exe "/winname:ZoomPlayer2" * New File Association and Smart Play profiles for the MOD/TOD/MTS camcorder file extensions. (MOD = MPEG2 Program, TOD/MTS = MPEG2 Transport Stream). Sadly, when JVC, Panasonic and Canon came up with the ".MOD" file extension, they didn't take into account its existing use as an Audio Tracker format. Due to this, ".MOD" extension is no longer associated with the MOD Audio Tracker format. You can change this default behavior by modifying Zoom Player's Smart Play profiles. * Zoom Player will now save FFDShow's color control values in Zoom Player's media definition files (".df" file extension). * New "VolumeWindow" Skin Script code, allowing you skin the new pop-up volume bar associated with the "fnVolumeWindow" function. * Smart Play profile support for the latest DivX filters: MPEG4.ASP (DIVX/XVID) MPEG4.AVC (H.264) AAC Audio MKV Splitter * You can now choose from three screen saver modes: 1. Plasma Cloud CGI. 2. Image Slideshow 3. Blank power-saving ode. + The default video renderer has been changed to VMR9 Windowless for Windows XP and EVR for Windows 7/Vista. + Scroll Acceleration is now active system-wide in all fullscreen navigation interfaces (where appropriate), making navigation faster and easier using remote devices and keyboards. + The media library fullscreen navigation interface now remembers the sorting order for each category independently. + The DirectShow filter registration options dialog feature (Adv. Options / System / Filter Management) has been rewritten to support configuration of popular DirectShow filters directly from the options dialog. Older unused filter profiles were removed and new updated profiles have been added. + You can now used Keyboard input with the GoTo navigation dialog to directly set the GoTo time. This requires that Keyboard Input for navigation be enabled. + Improved Screen Saver image selection randomness. No image will appear twice until all images were displayed first, even after the screen saver restarts. + Pressing PgDn/PgUp to play the next/previous media file in the same directory now works even after erasing the currently playing file, making it much easier to browse through a media or image collection to erase unwanted files. + Using the Next/Previous playlist track with random play enabled and only one file in the playlist no longer plays the same file again, but rather plays the next file in the directory. + The Advanced Options "Fullscreen Navigation" pages have been moved under the "Interface" section (previously it was within the "On Screen Display" section). + By default, the Media Library Filter Selection fullscreen navigation page will no longer appear when pressing Left on the Media Library category page (user-selectable through the options dialog). + The "Windows Media Video" Smart Play profile has been split into two distinct profiles: 1. Windows Media Video (used in WMV files) 2. VC1 (used in BluRay discs) + For clarity, the "Auto Segment Load" feature has been renamed "Multi Part file loader". + For clarity, the Multi Part file loader's "Segment Script" setting has been renamed "Name Masking" . + The "Multi Part file loader" feature has been disabled by default due to user confusion over files being added to the playlist automatically. You can re-enable this feature through the options dialog. + Pressing the ESC key with a fullscreen navigation interface enabled and secondary monitors are blanked will now remove the blanking first (In previous versions, the navigation interface was closed first). + Pressing the ESC key in the options dialog is now treated as if the Cancel button is clicked. + Frame Capture (Alt+"F") now works with the EVR video renderer. + Starting the screen saver from the main fullscreen navigation interface no longer pauses if an audio file is being played (only pause on video file). + To maintain backward compatibility, the Zoom Player chapter (bookmark) file extension has changed from ".chp" to ".zpchp". Zoom Player will still look for the ".chp" file when the newer format file doesn't exist. - Closing multiple player instances at once with Zoom Player set to save its setting to a local file could cause the settings file to corrupt. - A bug in the ID3v1 parser caused playlists containing audio files with ID3v1 tags not to save/load properly if the ID3v1 TAG contained in the audio file was semi-corrupt. - Opening the options dialog through a skin button while a new audio file starts playing and the skin automatically changes to audio mode would cause a "not enough timers" crash. - The "Default media open path" (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Paths) used by the standard open dialog and the file browsing fullscreen navigation interface can now accept network paths. For network paths to work with the file navigator, you must add the path under as an "Additional File Nav path" (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation). - Chapters are now time based rather than frame based as different components (filters/renderers) would report different frame rates for the same media file, causing chapter files created with one set of filters playing invalid when using a different set of filters. - Adding/Removing audio devices (such as a Skype Phone which acts as a speaker device), will no longer change the audio device settings Zoom Player uses. If you insert a new audio device while Zoom Player is already running, opening the options dialog or restarting the player is required. - Zoom Player no longer requires "wmvcore.dll" on the system to run. (it may be required for WMV playback, depending on your setup). - The Adjust Image fullscreen navigation interface lost the H-SIZE/V-SIZE values. They are now back. - Fixed a crash when trying to open a DVD title over a network path. - Fixed a rare crash when trying to show the Control Panel while the media library navigation interface is opening. - The eMule File Tracker did not work with files between 2 and 4gb. - The uTorrent File Tracker did not work if the Torrent folder and the torrent file name used the same name. - The FFDShow Subtitle Renderer would sometimes display subtitles from previously played videos. - Selecting files in the file Browser and Media Library fullscreen navigation interface and adding them to the playlist now adds them in the correct sorting order and doesn't re-sort the original list. - Fixed a bug introduced in v7 RC1 which caused a "list index out of bounds" error when Random Play was enabled while only having one file in the playlist. - Using the Quick Search function on the File Browser and Media Library fullscreen navigation interfaces with a directory containing a low number of files would previously show a blank screen. - The "Play all files in this directory" navigation function would not appear if there was only one directory listed. Applies to both the media library and file browsing fullscreen navigation interfaces. - Using the Quick Search function in a directory containing 1000's of files could cause the file names to be cut short. - You can no longer set image-blanking values greater than the video size. - Pressing Enter after closing the options dialog could cause a play command to be issued (instead of the assigned function). - The internal screen saver will no longer activate when the White Wash pattern is in use. - If "On Playlist Compelete" was set to "Do Nothing" and the video renderer was set as EVR, reaching a media's end would result in the video disappearing. - The Filter Profiles list (Adv. Option / System / Filter Management) would not list any filters when doing a Standard install. - Transparent buttons on the control bar would lose their transparency region under certain conditions.