Zoom Player

[Godwin]

Version 15.6 beta 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The media library category editor has been restructured. New categories
are no longer automatically sorted in alphabetical order and instead
always added to the bottom of the category list. New "Move up" and
"Move down" buttons now allow you to manually re-order categories.

* New "Preferred audio device cycle list" (Adv. Options / Playback / Audio)
that allows you to select your preferred audio renderers and quickly
switch between them".

* New Shift+"A" keyboard macro that switches between audio rendering devices
on the Preferred audio device cycle list".

* The "Start player in" setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Position & Size)
has been split to provide a more granular control of how the player should
start. Please note that this change required resetting this setting to
it's default value.

* Zoom Player's Event Ghost plugin has been updated to support all the
latest Zoom Player functions:
http://www.eventghost.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3498&p=55891#p55891

+ Using the "/LASTNAV" and "/MAINNAV" command line parameters no longer
switches the user interface to fullscreen automatically, you must now
add the "/F" parameter to maintain the same functionality.

+ Clicking the media library's "<" button now respects the "Nav-Left goes
up a folder before entering the Drive/Category list" setting.

+ The "Show system library folders in the Media Library Navigator" setting
has been removed and replaced by a new button in the media library category
editor that lets you add the windows library folders with a single click.
With this change, you are now able to easily customize the windows
library folders.

- Restoring after minimizing the user interface from fullscreen mode, no
longer restores the user interface to windowed mode instead of fullscreen.

- Fixed a freeze when playing JPEG files with malformed exif headers.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 15.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 15.6 beta 3 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The media library category editor can now be set to show "All"
categories to allow sorting across category types.

- Clicking the 'show volume bar' button on the control bar showed
the volume bar in a slightly-off position.

- Disabling the "Flash active thumbnail on navigation actions" setting,
prevented the media library thumbnail view from updating when resizing
the screen and until a navigation action was triggered.

- Network paths specified in the 'File Browser "Network / Disk" mapping'
setting no longer allow you to 'folder-up' once reaching the specified
base path.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 15.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16 beta 4 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* TheMovieDB.org's media scraper is now capable of scraping U.S.
Movie (G/PG/PG-13/R/NC-17) and TV (TV-Y/TV-Y7/TV-G/TV-PG/TV-14/TV-MA)
content rating. The content rating appears as an icon next to the
other codec/format icons appearing in jukebox mode.

You will need to re-scrape your media in order to see content rating
on previously scraped media.

* TheMovieDB.org's media scraper's configuration can now be set to
scrape for "no language" content.

* New (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Customization)
"Show play position bar on list icons with the this color" setting
(disabled by default)

* New (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)
"Show Previously Played counter in path area" setting that displays the
number of yet to be played media within the current media library folder
next to the folder's path (disabled by default).

* New YouTube Playlist media library plugin which allows you to easily
import YouTube playlists as Zoom Player media library categories.

* You can now refresh a media library category with a new "Refresh" button
to update the display if the folder content was changed in the background.

* The navigation skinning engine has been enhanced to add more granular
support for the path area's icon size and position.

+ The fullscreen information navigation interface now splits long
information into multiple lines.

- The caching mechanism for media library category thumbnail caching was
mostly broken, not actually caching most of the thumbnails. With this
fix, subsequently browsing the category list should be much snappier.

- Renaming files/folder in the media library no longer causes the play
position to be forgotten and the media no longer requires a re-scrape
operation.

- The YouTube Channel media library plugin now support YouTube channels that
use a slightly different URL structure.
For example "https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFighterAndTheKid/videos".
It will not work 100% of the time as google didn't release an API call
to translate custom channel names to a channel ID required to get a 100%
reliable result. For more information, see:
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/174903934

- The YouTube Media Library plugins did not take into account time-zone
and daylight saving differences when displaying a video's publish time.

- The Adjust Image fullscreen navigation interface did not list the
active Aspect Ratio correctly.

- The fullscreen information navigation interface did not display in the
correct width under some conditions.

- The full path displayed in the play history fullscreen navigation
interface is now correctly truncated to more clearly display long
file names.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 15.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16 release candidate 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation /
Customization) to hide the media library's meta-data and category
filter sections, using the extra space to display more media.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / History) that controls whether
erasing files to the recycle bin also removes their record from the
play history.

* Pressing the media library's refresh button will also refresh the scraped
images, reflecting any manual changes to poster images.

+ For clarity, the media library's "Select / Unselect" and multiple
selection functions have been split into two separate entries.

+ Opus audio duration is now retrieved when used with an ".ogg" container.

+ Opus audio duration is now retrieved by default when adding ".opus" files
to the playlist. For existing Zoom Player users, to enable this feature
you must click the "default" button next to the "Auto-Get Duration"
section of the Advanced Options' "File Extension" page.

- Disabling the "Flash active thumbnail on navigation actions" setting,
at times prevented the media library thumbnail view from updating when
entering categories.

- Switching to audio mode with calibration patterns visible didn't hide
the patterns, messing up the UI.

- When opening the media library's functions page in an empty category, a
cosmetic glitch showing a "-2 B" size would appear in the file size area.

- Fixed a few cosmetic issues with residue text remaining on-screen after
existing the media library's function menu.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 15.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16 release candidate 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Optimized drawing of media library category thumbnails, up-to 43% faster.

* Optimized drawing of media library media thumbnails, up-to 38% faster.

* Optimized the time it takes to open the media library, in some cases
up-to 50% faster.

* Optimized loading of the playcache file by up-to 17%, which should help
Zoom Player open faster when storing play history over a long duration.

* Rewrote scroll update polling to improve smoothness when scrolling within
the media library's thumbnail view.

* Due to a bug fix (see below) and optimizations to the code, Zoom Player
should close a little bit faster.

* Media library folder based categories are now sorted on a per-folder
basis. When entering a folder for the first time, it will always start
sorted by name, but any change to the sorting mode will now persist
without affecting other folders in the category.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface) that uses the fullscreen navigation
UI to confirm when deleting the currently playing file.

* You can now sort the media library in Random order.

* You can now sort the media library by "Remaining Play Time" based on a
percentage of the media's remaining play remaining.

* When going up to the base folder in the file browsing fullscreen
navigation interface, there is now a "Return to path list" option
to make navigation more intuitive.

+ The "Auto-select last viewed file/folder on entering a folder" setting now
works better when used in combination with the "Nav-Enter on media library
category list opens the category at the root folder" setting.

+ When both "Auto-select last viewed file/folder on entering a folder" and
"Nav-Enter on media library category list opens the category at the root
folder" settings are enabled, entering a category will highlight the
folder containing the last played file.

+ APE audio duration is now retrieved by default when adding ".ape" files
to the playlist. For existing Zoom Player users, to enable this feature
you must click the "default" button next to the "Auto-Get Duration"
section of the Advanced Options' "File Extension" page.

+ The play history's "Erase" entries has been renamed to "Remove from Play
History" to make it clearer the files themselves are not touched.

+ Switching to the 'system' sub-menu in the main fullscreen navigation
interface will now switch the title from 'main' to 'system'.

+ Removing the currently playing media from play history will now close
the playing media.

+ When completing playback of a media, the play history dialog and
fullscreen navigation interfaces will no longer show a zero position or
no position at all and will instead show the media's duration to signify
the media has been played all the way through.

+ You can now use the Home/End keys within the media library fullscreen
navigation interface's category filter section to access the top/bottom
of the category list.

- When the current monitor used a high-DPI setting, the icon on confirmation
/warning/information dialogs appeared cropped.

- Skin tinting did not affect confirmation/warning/information dialogs.

- The play position bar in the media library's TV jukebox mode was not
properly integrated when the thumbnail frame used round corners like
in the Sunset skin.

- The file browser fullscreen navigation interface suffered some issues when
working with empty drives/root folders.

- Fixed multiple issues when trying to erase network shared folders from
within the file browsing fullscreen navigation interface:
1. Currently playing file did not close.
2. File was not removed from play history.

- The main fullscreen navigation interface's 'system' sub-menu did not show
relevant icons, only showing the system icon.

- The Advanced Options dialog's "Help / Export" button's pop-up menu did not
draw correctly on high-DPI displays.

- The playlist's "Open item folder", "Save playing file" and
"Rename/Move file" features did not work with network paths.

- Deleting all play history entries could leave some entries listed in the
dialog until the dialog was closed and reopened.

- Trying to show a fullscreen navigation interface while Zoom Player is
minimized now restores Zoom Player's window.

- The Play History and Play History fullscreen navigation interfaces
will now display the play position for the currently playing file
correctly.

- Creating folder using the file browsing fullscreen navigation interface
failed when used under a network path.

- Under some conditions, Zoom Player's media cache folder containing
scraped metadata and images (thumbnails, posters, backdrops) would
prune every time you tried closing Zoom Player, instead of once
per week.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 15.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v16 final has been released:

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml

Highlights:

Media library screen updates are up to 40% faster.
Opening the media library is up to 50% faster.
Opening and closing Zoom Player itself is up to 15% faster.
Media library scroll polling optimized for a much smoother scrolling experience.
Media library scraping support for Movie and TV content rating (G/PG/R/etc).
Media library full height "wall of thumbnails" feature.
Media library play position bar on icons feature.
Media library previously played counter indicator feature.
Media library YouTube playlist category plugin (use YouTube playlist as a media library category).
Media library category order customization (manage category listing order).
Single action audio device switching (e.g. speakers to headphones).
Network Keep-Alive feature (prevent network drives from disconnecting on inactivity).
To ensure Zoom Player feel more intuitive, many user-experience tweaks were made throughout ZP's interfaces.


Previous changes since the release of version 15.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16.1 beta 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New interface Sound-FX system that triggers sounds when certain
actions are taken (Adv. Options / Interface / Sounds) :
1. Zoom Player Startup.
2. Navigation motion (left/right/up/down).
3. Navigation actions (enter/back/esc).
4. Seeking (forward/backward/tracks).
5. Edge-Bump (media library).

You can pick the volume level and the output sound device and limit
some of the sounds if a video is playing or when using the mouse.

* The media library can now display a media file's approximate bitrate
(e.g. 9.2 Mpbs). You will need to re-scrape media to see this update.

* You can now search for subtitles on movie folders, Zoom Player will
use the first video file within the folder to find matching subtitle
tracks.

* New "Thumbnail icon size" setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Fullscreen
Navigation / Customization) that controls the thumbnail media icon size
for media/icons that do not have a thumbnail image.

* New "Prevent mouse actions from moving or resizing the main window"
setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Position & Size" that blocks the
mouse from resizing or moving the main player window.

* New "Skip requesting confirmation to erase file" setting (Adv. Options /
Interface) to remove the confirmation request when erasing the playing
media to the recycle bin.

* New "Do not use scraped image as thumbnail" media library category setting.
When enabled, Zoom Player will ignore any thumbnail downloaded using a
scraping plugin and depending on other category settings, Zoom Player will
try extracting a thumbnail from the video itself.

* New "Do not use MediaInfo.dll to extract file metadata" media library
category setting. When enabled, Zoom Player will not try to use
MediaInfo.dll to extract metadata from files such as file format, codec,
audio channels, etc.

* New "exPLSortOrder" extended function capable of choosing the sorting
order (ascending, descending). A value of "0" sets ascending and "1"
sets descending. Please note that this function doesn't actually sort
the list.

* New "exPLSort" extended function to sort the current playlist.
Possible values are:
0 : Sort by Name
1 : Sort by File Type (file extension)
2 : Sort by File Date
3 : Sort by File Size
4 : Sort by File Path (folder)
5 : Sort by Media Duration (in seconds)
6 : Sort Randomly (random order)

* New "exPLRemoveItem" extended function that allows you to directly
remove a playlist item. Please note that the first item in the playlist
is actually "0" and not "1".

+ When reaching the top/bottom position in the media library's thumbnail
view, Zoom Player now tries to maintain the current column when the
top/bottom bump bar is triggered twice to perform a scroll to top/bottom
action.

+ Improved support for long paths (over 250 characters) in the media library
and file browsing fullscreen navigation interfaces (especially over network
shared paths).

+ The minimum number of media library category columns has been changed
from 3 to 2.

- With the "opening media library always selects the playing media" setting
enabled, renaming a file or creating a new folder could change the active
path.

- Fixed high-DPI issues with unskinned confirmation dialogs.

- Fixed an erroneous OSD notification when using the media library's
mini-menu to add a category "refresh" or "append" entries to the playlist.

- Fixed an issue that caused the media library to freeze if there were
missing bitmap files in the navigation skin folder.

- While in fullscreen mode, clicking on the playlist editor or equalizer
windows when positioned over a hot-corner would activate the hot-corner
action.

- Opening a streaming YouTube URL using DirectShow would not show the
video's title in the play history until after the video was closed.

- Showing the control bar for the very first time showed a black rectangle
in the top left corner of the screen for a split second.

- Fixed a crash in the Media Library's playlist category plugin when parsing
certain ".m3u" playlists.

- When using the media library's refresh button on a plugin based category,
it accidentally cleared the media's titles.

- The option dialog's audio visualization configuration options were
completely broken.

- The "fnRestart" and "fnRestartWithParam" functions restarted Zoom Player
without first saving settings, which caused the restarted copy to revert
some settings.

- Playing a network shared file from command line would miss an external
subtitle file in the same folder and no subtitles were shown.





Previous beta changes since the release of version 16:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16.1 beta 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New "Confirm when resuming playback from previous position" setting
(Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings) to
request confirmation before resuming playback from the last saved
position when playing media from a TV or Movie media library category.

Please note, this setting is on by default and requires play history
enabled to function.

+ The erase playing media and fullscreen navigation erase dialogs will
now display the media's title alongside the file name.

+ Double-clicking the media library's category entries in list-view mode
now performs an "Enter" navigation action instead of "Right".

- With the "Disable the Control Bar in Window Mode" setting enabled,
exiting fullscreen would briefly show the control bar.

- When Two movie folders shared a similar base name (e.g. "Men in Black"
and "Men in Black 2"), the wrong progress bar position would show
for the first folder.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 16:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16.1 beta 3 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The navigation Sound FX are now applied to every navigation interface.

+ Replaced the "Right arrow" icon with an "Enter" icon on the mini
color control interface.

- Fixed a cosmetic glitch in the media scanner that caused paths to
draw over icons.

- Setting the image slideshow duration for loaded images to "0" would
show an incorrect timeline "remaining time" value.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 16:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16.5 release candidate 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Introducing Charcoal, Zoom Player's new default skin.
Charcoal includes the same layout and functionality as the
previous Onyx default skin but uses more subtle shading and
cleaner elements to better fit with Windows 10's look and feel.

The onyx skin is still shipping with Zoom Player, you can switch
back by opening the skin selection dialog using the "N" keyboard
macro or through the right-click menu.

* It is now possible to play videos from Twitch.tv.

* New "Mark as Seen" media library feature accessible through the
functions menu (toggle the cogwheel, or right-arrow in list mode).
When marking media or entire folders as seen, you will be prompted
to "Mark as seen now" or "Mark as seen archive". Depending on your
choice the marked entries will appear at the start or end of the
play history list.

* New "Select all Unseen" media library feature that selects every
media or folder containing content that exists in the play history.

* New "Select all Seen" media library feature that selects every
media or folder containing content that does not exist in the
play history.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation /
Settings) that controls whether the Media Library's media scraping
indicator is visible within the path area.

+ A major redesign of the media library's scraping operation.
Scraping of new content should no longer block thumbnail and
meta-data updates for previously scraped content.
This change should help Zoom Player feel more responsive.

+ Rewrote the audio TAG/ID3 scraping code for enhanced efficiency
and reliability.

+ The file meta-data edit window's title now features only the file
name and not the full path.

+ The media library's YouTube Playlist plugin is now more flexible
when parsing YouTube playlist URL structures. YouTube uses
multiple URL structures to present playlists and now the plugin
should support all of them.

+ The "Force the navigation list or thumb view display to full width"
and "Force the navigation list or thumb view to maximum width"
settings now apply to the path area and not only to the media area.

- Fixed a hidden crash that destabilized Zoom Player when closing
the media library while the thumb view was in the process of
smooth scrolling.

- You can no longer open the windowed go to time/chapter editor if
no media is currently playing.

- YouTube has a bug in it's API that can cause duplicate entries to
show when loading more entries. Previously in such cases,
Zoom Player didn't show a thumbnail for a duplicate entry, at
least this bug is fixed, can't do much about YouTube's API bugs.

- The media library's scraping counter did not update if you
exit the folder the current scraping operations were working on
until the screen was updated.

- Stopped the Create Ringtone function from attempting to work with
network streams (it never worked with URLs, but still allowed you
to select the position and fill in details into the save dialog).

- Fixed a rare case where there media library would not respond to
input correctly when playing a movie then exiting to the main
navigation interface and then back to the media library.

- Fixed a few small memory leaks.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 16:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16.5 release candidate 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


- Bug fixes.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 16:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v16.5 final has been released:

Highlights:


Introducing Charcoal, Zoom Player's new default skin!
A major redesign of the media library's scraping operation, faster, more responsive.
Highly customizable fullscreen navigation Sound-FX system.
Enhanced media library features such as "resume confirmation" and "mark as seen".
Rewritten audio TAG/ID3 scraping code for enhanced efficiency and reliability.
Twitch.tv support
Enhanced long paths support.
Important bug fixes that enhance stability.



What's new in Zoom Player v16.5:

* Introducing Charcoal, Zoom Player's new default skin!

Charcoal includes the same layout and functionality as the
previous Onyx default skin but uses more subtle shading and
cleaner elements to better fit with Windows 10's look and feel.

The onyx skin is still included with Zoom Player, you can switch
by opening the skin selection dialog using the "N" keyboard macro
or through the right-click menu.

* New interface Sound-FX system that triggers sounds when certain
actions are triggered (Adv. Options / Interface / Sounds) :
1. Zoom Player Startup.
2. Navigation motion (left/right/up/down).
3. Navigation actions (enter/back/esc).
4. Seeking (forward/backward/tracks).
5. Edge-Bump (media library).

You can pick the volume level and the output sound device and limit
some of the sounds if a video is currently playing or when using the
mouse to perform actions.

* The media library can now display a media file's approximate
bitrate (e.g. 9.2 Mpbs). You will need to re-scrape old media
to see this update.

* It is now possible to play videos from Twitch.tv.

* New "Confirm when resuming playback from previous position" setting
(Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings) to
request confirmation before resuming playback from the last saved
position when playing media from a TV or Movie media library category.

Please note, this setting is on by default and requires play history
enabled to function.

* New "Mark as Seen" media library feature accessible through the
functions menu (toggle the cogwheel, or right-arrow in list mode).
When marking media or entire folders as seen, you will be prompted
to "Mark as seen now" or "Mark as seen archive". Depending on your
choice the marked entries will appear at the start or end of your
play history.

* New "Select all Unseen" media library feature that selects every
media or folder containing media that was seen (listed in your
play history).

* New "Select all Seen" media library feature that selects every
media or folder containing media that is not listed in your
play history.

* You can now perform subtitle searches on movie folders, Zoom Player
will automatically use the first video file within the folder to find
matching subtitle tracks.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation /
Settings) that controls whether the Media Library's media scraping
indicator and counter are visible within the path area.

* New "Thumbnail icon size" setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Fullscreen
Navigation / Customization) that controls the icon sizes in thumbnail
view mode.

* New "Prevent mouse actions from moving or resizing the main window"
setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Position & Size" that blocks the
mouse from being able to resize or move the main player window.

* New "Skip requesting confirmation to erase file" setting (Adv. Options /
Interface) used to skip the confirmation request dialog when erasing
the playing media to the recycle bin.

* New "Do not use scraped image as thumbnail" media library category setting.
When enabled, Zoom Player ignores any thumbnail downloaded using a
scraping plugin and depending on other category settings, Zoom Player will
try to extract a thumbnail from the video file itself.

* New "Do not use MediaInfo.dll to extract file metadata" media library
category setting. When enabled, Zoom Player will not try to use
MediaInfo.dll to extract metadata from files such as file format, codec,
audio channels, etc. This can speed up scraping operation, but it also
means the metadata displayed in the media library will be limited.

* New "exPLSortOrder" extended function capable of choosing the playlist
sorting order (ascending, descending). A value of "0" sets ascending
and a value of "1" sets descending. Please note that this function
doesn't actually sort the list.

* New "exPLSort" extended function to sort the current playlist.
Possible values are:
0 : Sort by Name
1 : Sort by File Type (file extension)
2 : Sort by File Date
3 : Sort by File Size
4 : Sort by File Path (folder)
5 : Sort by Media Duration (in seconds)
6 : Sort Randomly (random order)

* New "exPLRemoveItem" extended function that allows you to directly
remove a playlist item. Please note that the first playlist item
has an index of "0" and not "1".

+ A major redesign of the media library's scraping operation.
Scraping of new content should no longer block thumbnail and
meta-data updates for previously scraped content.
The redesign should make Zoom Player feel more responsive.

+ Rewrote the audio TAG/ID3 scraping code for enhanced efficiency
and reliability.

+ When reaching the top/bottom position in the media library's thumbnail
view, Zoom Player now tries to maintain the current column when the
top/bottom bump bar is triggered twice to perform a scroll to top/bottom
action.

+ Improved support for long paths (over 250 characters) in the media library
and file browsing fullscreen navigation interfaces (especially over network
shared paths).

+ The file meta-data edit window's title now features only the file
name and not the full path.

+ The media library's YouTube Playlist plugin is now more flexible
when parsing YouTube playlist URL structures. YouTube uses
multiple URL structures to present playlists and now the plugin
should support all of them.

+ The "Force the navigation list or thumb view display to full width"
and "Force the navigation list or thumb view to maximum width"
settings now apply to the path area and not only to the media area.

+ The minimum number of media library category columns has been changed
from 3 to 2.

+ The "erase playing media" and "fullscreen navigation erase" dialogs
now display the media's title alongside the file name.

+ Double-clicking the media library's category entries in list-view mode
now performs an "Enter" navigation action instead of "Right".

+ Replaced the "Right arrow" icon with an "Enter" icon on the mini
color control interface.

- Fixed a hidden crash that destabilized Zoom Player when closing
the media library while the thumb view was in the process of
smooth scrolling.

- You can no longer open the windowed go to time/chapter editor if
no media is currently playing.

- YouTube has a bug in it's API that can cause duplicate entries to
show when loading more entries. Previously in such cases,
Zoom Player didn't show a thumbnail for a duplicate entry, at
least this bug is fixed, can't do much about YouTube's API bugs.

- The media library's scraping counter did not update if you
exited the folder currently scraping until some action updated
the screen.

- Stopped the Create Ringtone function from attempting to work with
network streams (it never worked with URLs, but still allowed you
to select the position and fill in details into the save dialog).

- Fixed a rare case where the media library would not respond to
input correctly when playing a movie and then exiting to the main
navigation interface and then returning back to the media library.

- With the "opening media library always selects the playing media" setting
enabled, renaming a file or creating a new folder could change the active
path.

- Fixed high-DPI issues with unskinned confirmation dialogs.

- Fixed an erroneous OSD notification when using the media library's
mini-menu to add a category "refresh" or "append" entries to the playlist.

- Fixed an issue that caused the media library to freeze if there were
missing bitmap files in the navigation skin folder.

- While in fullscreen mode, clicking on the playlist editor or equalizer
windows when positioned over a hot-corner would activate the hot-corner
action.

- Opening a streaming YouTube URL using DirectShow would not show the
video's title in the play history until after the video was closed.

- Showing the control bar for the very first time showed a black rectangle
in the top left corner of the screen for a split second.

- Fixed a crash in the Media Library's playlist category plugin when parsing
certain ".m3u" playlists.

- When using the media library's refresh button on a plugin based category,
it accidentally cleared the media's titles.

- The advanced option dialog audio visualization configuration options were
completely broken.

- The "fnRestart" and "fnRestartWithParam" functions restarted Zoom Player
without first saving settings, which caused the restarted copy to revert
some settings.

- Playing a network shared file from command line would miss an external
subtitle file in the same folder and no subtitles were shown.

- With the "Disable the Control Bar in Window Mode" setting enabled,
exiting fullscreen briefly showed the control bar.

- When Two movie folders shared a similar base name (e.g. "Men in Black"
and "Men in Black 2"), the wrong progress bar position would show
for the first folder.

- Fixed a cosmetic glitch in the media scanner that caused paths to
draw over icons.

- Setting the image slideshow duration for loaded images to "0" would
show an incorrect "remaining time" value on the timeline.

- Fixed a few small memory leaks.


Download ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml') : What's new ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml')

[Godwin]

Version 16.6 beta 1 has been released.


Download:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml



Changes in this beta:


* New feature!


+ Changed feature!


- Fixed feature!





* New Smart Play profile for the Apple ProRes codecs.


* New setting (Adv. Options / Playback) to select the web engine used

to render the YouTube IFRAME player, either the old Edge Chakra engine

or the newer (and much better quality) Edge Chromium.

Please note that that Edge Chromium requires the WebView2 component

installed. WebView2 comes pre-installed in Windows 11 and is an

optional download for Windows 10.



The WebView2 component is available for download directly from

Microsoft or using Zoom Player's install center application.


+ The YouTube IFRAME player's preferred video quality setting has been

removed as YouTube depreciated this feature.


- The YouTube IFRAME player did not function properly in regions using

the "," character as a decimal separator.


- Pressing "Stop" twice to perform a Stop/Resume action did not work

when using the YouTube IFRAME player.



- When customizing the media library to use full height in combination

with the category display set to list mode, using the Up/Down arrows

at the Start/End of the category list would not roll-over to the

Start/End of the list correctly.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 16.5:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 16.6 beta 2 has been released.


Download:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml



Changes in this beta:


* New feature!


+ Changed feature!


- Fixed feature!


* New ".ISO" drive mounting and playback settings to help automate the
process of mounting ISO images and playing their content. An external
mounting tool (such as Virtual CloneDrive) is required.
Accessible under "Adv. Options / File Format Assocation / File Extensions."
Please note that with this change, it is no longer possible to extract and
play ISO files as if they were archives.

* The ".WEBP" image format is now supported when using the internal image
decoder.

* New feature that replaces the TV Jukebox thumbnail for the currently
playing media with the currently displayed image. This feature is
limited to "TV Shows" media library categories and can be triggered
through the Alt+Ctrl+"F" keyboard macro and the "fnCaptureScrapedImage"
function.

* New Media Library feature to sort categories by Play Date. When enabled
the most recently played files (or folders containing files that have
been played) will be listed first.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) to automatically hide
the Playlist editor when entering fullscreen mode.

+ When using the Media Library's Cut/Copy/Paste functionality,
Performing a "Paste" operation in the root virtual folder of a
category containing multiple folders, ZP will now try to paste
the file(s) to a folder on the same drive when possible and only
use the folder of the currently highlighted entry if no folders
in the pasted category are on the same drive.

+ ISO files are now always visible in media library video categories.

- When the setting to show file extensions in the navigation
interfaces was disabled, URLs appeared cropped in the play
history fullscreen navigation interface.

- Opening a subtitle file for a playing video when using MadVR
as the video renderer could cause the video to appear in
a new window.

- Fixed a bug in TV jukebox mode that prevented some file meta-data
from displaying when the file name contained unicode characters.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 16.5:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17 beta 3 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video / Subtitles) that limits
the "next subtitle" feature to specified languages.

For example to limit the subtitle tracks to Spanish, English and
Directory Commentary, you only need to specify "spa;eng;dir" and
any subtitle track not containing these values will by skipped when
switching to the next subtitle track.

* New "exSetAudioSync" extended function that allows you to set a positive
or negative millisecond accurate audio synchronization offset.

* Added support for YouTube Shorts URL parsing and playback, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5TTNpKFy_10

+ YouTube media library plugins no longer return a star rating or dislike
count since YouTube removed public dislike data.

+ The "Pause playback when minimizing the player window while playing
video content" setting is now ignored for live streams with no duration
specified as it just caused the stream to close.

+ Disabled the Startup sound if a media was already in the process
of loading.

+ The Media Library's function page is now more dynamic, removing entries
that may not be useful in some contexts (e.g. using plugins).

+ TheMovieDB scraper plugin will now download movie poster images at full
resolution (previously limited to 500x750px). This change means you will
see sharper looking posters on 4K displays. This fix requires that you
re-scrape movies to download the higher resolution poster images.

- Seeking Ahead/Back on YouTube streams using the IFRAME player would
reset the play position to 0 if the windows decimal separator was
set to something other than ".".

- Restoring last play position for YouTube videos played using the IFRAME
player did not function currently on some PCs with a slower internet
connection.

- Displaying the current video resolution on the timeline while using
the YouTube IFRAME playback engine displayed a fixed value instead
of the value returned by the YouTube IFRAME engine.

- The "Open Media Library" button on the Media Library category editor
did not function if the category mode was set to view all (prism).

- YouTube channels containing the "&" character in the name would not
show the correct channel name under some conditions.

- Fixed a cosmetic bug in the play history dialog that would show the
current position with a negative value.

- Edits to the playlist using the playlist editor should now be
reflected in the advanced playlist control interface.

- The playing information fullscreen navigation interface was not
updating in real time and didn't update at all when playing
new SHOUTcast content.

- The "Open Drive" feature broke down for multiple use cases, including
using Zoom Player to auto-play a drive.

- The Media Library's "mark as seen:archive" option will now close the
currently playing media if it's being archived.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 16.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17 beta 4 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New metadata editor accessible by right-clicking TV or Movie entries in
the media library. The metadata editor allows you to replace thumbnails
and backdrops along with editing the Title, Release date, Overview,
Genre, Tags and Collections.

* New media library filtering by Genre, Tags and Collections. Accessible
through the functions menu or by clicking the new "funnel shape" filter
icon in the path area. Filtering is remembered on a per-category basis
and is stored across sessions (even after exiting Zoom Player).

* The media library mini-menu has been extended with two new functions you
can select : "Filter list" and "Edit metadata".

- Under some conditions, pressing the ESC/Menu keys to close the right-click
context menu would break some keyboard functionality.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 16.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17 release candidate 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The mouse's backward and forward button can now be assigned custom
functionality when a navigation interface is visible.

* YouTube kids URLs should now work with the IFRAME player.

* New "Sort by Release Date" media library sort option (Only works on
scraped media [TV & Movies]).

* New "Sort by Sort Title" media library sort option (Only works on
scraped media [TV & Movies]). This sorting mode allows you to use the
meta-data editor to specify an "invisible" custom title that Zoom Player
will use for sorting. When no sorting title is specified, Zoom Player
automatically uses the media'a title (if one exists) or file name.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)
that controls whether filtering lists in the media library can use multiple
parameters (e.g. "Genre" and "Tag") at the same time.

* New "9:16" thumbnail aspect ratio option for media library thumbnails
suitable to vertical videos.

* New configuration option for TheMovieDB scraping plugin that allows you
to select the poster/backdrop/still image sizes.

* New "Edit Metadata" option in the media library's functions page for TV
and Movie categories.

- Play history features such as "resume playback" and "previous play position
on thumbnails" did not function on files with over 128 characters.

- Playing files with over 128 characters in their name created duplicate play
history entries.

- You could actually click on media library path icons even when they were
invisible in the category list.

- When viewing the media library's categories page, you could click
above/below the scroll-bar area and it would still affect the scroll
position.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 16.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17 release candidate 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New "Sort by Star Rating" media library sort option (Only works on
scraped media [TV & Movies]). You can adjust the Movie/TV Show's
star rating using the metadata editor.

- There was a bug in v17 RC1 that caused play history to break when
playing streaming content and possibly in other cases.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 16.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v17 final has been released:

Highlights:


Edit meta-data for Media Library TV and Movie categories.
Filter media library categories by Genre, Tags and Collections.
Sort the media library by Release Date, Play Date, Sort Title and Star Rating.
Automate ".ISO" mounting and playback using free, 3rd party tools.
Filter subtitle to cycle faster through tracks.
Enhance YouTube IFRAME player image quality using the Edge Chromium.
Support new YouTube URL formats (Kids, Shorts, etc).
Decode ".WEBP" images.
Customize extended mouse controls in navigation mode.



What's new in Zoom Player v17:

* New metadata editor accessible by right-clicking TV and Movie entries in
the media library (also available through the functions page and as a
mini-menu option). The metadata editor allows you to replace thumbnails
and backdrops along with editing the Title, Sort Title, Release date,
Rating, Overview, Genre, Tags and Collections.

* New media library filtering by Genre, Tags and Collections. Accessible
through the functions menu or by clicking the new "funnel shape" filter
icon in the path area. Your filtering choice is remembered on a
per-category basis and is stored across sessions
(even after exiting Zoom Player).

* New "Sort by Release Date" media library sort option (Only works on
scraped media [TV & Movies]).

* New "Sort by Play Date" media library sort option to sort your categories
by the most recently played files (or folders containing files that have
been played).

* New "Sort by Sort Title" media library sort option (Only works on
scraped media [TV & Movies]). This sorting mode allows you to use the
meta-data editor to specify an "invisible" custom title that Zoom Player
will use for sorting while still displaying the original title.
When no sorting title is specified, Zoom Player automatically uses the
media's title (if one exists) or file name.

* New "Sort by Star Rating" media library sort option (Only works on
scraped media [TV & Movies]). Initially populated with scraped data,
you can adjust the Movie/TV Show's star rating using the metadata editor.

* The media library mini-menu has been extended with two new functions you
can select : "Filter list" and "Edit metadata".

* The mouse's backward and forward button can now be assigned custom
functionality when a navigation interface is visible.

* New ".ISO" drive mounting and playback settings to help automate the
process of mounting ISO images and playing their content. An external
mounting tool (such as Virtual CloneDrive) is required.
Accessible under "Adv. Options / File Format Association / File Extensions."
Please note that with this change, it is no longer possible to extract and
play ISO files as if they were archives.

* New setting (Adv. Options / Playback) to select the web engine used
to render the YouTube IFRAME player, either the old Edge Chakra engine
or the newer (and much better quality) Edge Chromium.

Please note that that Edge Chromium requires the WebView2 component
installed. WebView2 comes pre-installed in Windows 11 and is an
optional download for Windows 10.

The WebView2 component is available for download directly from
Microsoft or using Zoom Player's install center application.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)
that controls whether filtering lists in the media library can use multiple
parameters (e.g. "Genre" and "Tag") at the same time.

* YouTube kids URLs should now work with the IFRAME player.

* Added support for YouTube Shorts URL parsing and playback, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5TTNpKFy_10

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) to automatically hide
the Playlist editor when entering fullscreen mode.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video / Subtitles) that limits
the "next subtitle" feature to specified languages.

For example to limit the subtitle tracks to Spanish, English and
Directory Commentary, you only need to specify "spa;eng;dir" and
any subtitle track not containing these values will by skipped when
switching to the next subtitle track.

* New "9:16" thumbnail aspect ratio option for media library thumbnails
suitable to vertical videos.

* The ".WEBP" image format is now supported when using the internal image
decoder.

* New feature that replaces the TV Jukebox thumbnail for the currently
playing media with the currently displayed image. This feature is
limited to "TV Shows" media library categories and can be triggered
through the Alt+Ctrl+"F" keyboard macro and the "fnCaptureScrapedImage"
function.

* New "Edit Metadata" option in the media library's functions page for TV
and Movie categories.

* New configuration option for TheMovieDB scraping plugin that allows you
to select the poster/backdrop/still image sizes.

* New Smart Play profile for the Apple ProRes codecs.

* New "exSetAudioSync" extended function that allows you to set a positive
or negative millisecond accurate audio synchronization offset.

+ YouTube media library plugins no longer return a star rating or dislike
count since YouTube removed public dislike data.

+ The "Pause playback when minimizing the player window while playing
video content" setting is now ignored for live streams with no duration
specified as it just caused the stream to close.

+ Disabled the Startup sound if a media was already in the process
of loading.

+ The Media Library's function page is now more dynamic, removing entries
that may not be useful in some contexts (e.g. using plugins).

+ TheMovieDB scraper plugin will now download movie poster images at full
resolution (previously limited to 500x750px). This change means you will
see sharper looking posters on 4K displays. This fix requires that you
re-scrape movies to download the higher resolution poster images.

+ To prevent longer copy times, when using the Media Library's
Cut/Copy/Paste functionality, Performing a "Paste" operation
in the root virtual folder of a category containing multiple folders,
ZP will now try to paste the file(s) to a folder on the same drive when
possible and only use the folder of the currently highlighted entry if
no folders in the pasted category are on the same drive.

+ In combination with the new ISO mounting feature, ISO files are now always
visible in media library video categories.

+ The YouTube IFRAME player's preferred video quality setting has been
removed as YouTube depreciated this feature.

- The YouTube IFRAME player did not function properly in regions using
the "," character as a decimal separator.

- Play history features such as "resume playback" and "previous play position
on thumbnails" did not function on files with over 128 characters.

- Playing files with over 128 characters in their name created duplicate play
history entries.

- Pressing "Stop" twice to perform a Stop/Resume action did not work
when using the YouTube IFRAME player.

- When customizing the media library to use full height in combination
with the category display set to list mode, using the Up/Down arrows
at the Start/End of the category list would not roll-over to the
Start/End of the list correctly.

- When the setting to show file extensions in the navigation
interfaces was disabled, URLs appeared cropped in the play
history fullscreen navigation interface.

- Opening a subtitle file for a playing video when using MadVR
as the video renderer could cause the video to appear in
a new window.

- Fixed a bug in TV jukebox mode that prevented some file meta-data
from displaying when the file name contained Unicode characters.

- Seeking Ahead/Back on YouTube streams using the IFRAME player would
reset the play position to 0 if the windows decimal separator was
set to something other than ".".

- Restoring last play position for YouTube videos played using the IFRAME
player did not function currently on some PCs with a slower internet
connection.

- Displaying the current video resolution on the timeline while using
the YouTube IFRAME playback engine displayed a fixed value instead
of the value returned by the YouTube IFRAME engine.

- The "Open Media Library" button on the Media Library category editor
did not function if the category mode was set to view all (prism).

- YouTube channels containing the "&" character in the name would not
show the correct channel name under some conditions.

- Fixed a cosmetic bug in the play history dialog that would show the
current position with a negative value.

- Edits to the playlist using the playlist editor should now be
reflected in the advanced playlist control interface.

- The playing information fullscreen navigation interface was not
updating in real time and didn't update at all when playing
new SHOUTcast content.

- The "Open Drive" feature broke down for multiple use cases, including
using Zoom Player to auto-play a drive.

- The Media Library's "mark as seen:archive" option will now close the
currently playing media if it's being archived.

- Under some conditions, pressing the ESC/Menu keys to close the right-click
context menu would break some keyboard functionality.

- You could actually click on media library path icons even when they were
invisible in the category list.

- When viewing the media library's categories page, you could click
above/below the scroll-bar area and it would still affect the scroll
position.


Download ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml') : What's new ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml')

[Godwin]

Version 17.1 beta 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New "Display unwatched counter on TV Show category folders" setting
(Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Thumbnail Cust.)
that counts the number of unwatched episodes in "TV Show" categories
and displays the count in a corner on the folder's thumbnail.

* Full customization for the TV Show unwatched counter:
1. Size (relative to thumbnail)
2. Margins (relative to Size)
3. Font Color
4. Background Color

+ If you previously used a download tracking plugin, you must now
re-enable it. Plugins were previously enabled by default which
could have caused delays when exiting Zoom Player.

+ Having ZP set to automatically show the media library when opening
will no longer show the media library if a media was set to load
using the command line.

+ Zoom Player will no longer display the default background image if
a media is set to load via command line, removing the slight flicker
of the image and slightly speeding up load time.

- Setting Zoom Player to pre-load fullscreen navigation graphics while
trying to play a media from command line could cause ZP to freeze.

- When taking a screenshot of the playing video (Alt+F), the generated
filename included a wrong position value (just the file name, the
image was taken from the correct position).

- The "Stop function closes streaming media (instead of just stopping)"
setting was accidentally applied to every playing media and not only
live streams.

- Fixed a bug that would break URL links in the active playlist when
closing and then re-opening Zoom Player.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17.1 beta 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New "Display thumbnail season progression bar" setting (Adv. Options /
Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Thumbnail Cust.) that shows a
season progression bar (similar to the last play position bar) in
TV Show category based on the number of watched/unwatched episodes
in a folder.

* New "Reset" option in each individual media library filtering mode
(Genre, Tag and Collection).

* Two new Pixel Shader scripts you can use with MadVR as the video
renderer to flip the video both horizontally and vertically.

+ Filtering the media library will now reset the selected entry to the
first item, unless the "Auto-select last viewed file/folder on
entering a folder" setting is enabled, in which case the last viewed
file or folder is selected automatically.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v17.1 final has been released

Zoom Player v17.1 final has been released:

Highlights:


Fully customizable unwatched counter on media library TV Show category folders
Media library TV Show season progression bar
Enhanced user experience for the media library's filtering feature
2 new pixel-shader scripts
Optimizations and bug fixes



Download ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml') : What's new ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml')

[Godwin]

Version 17.2 beta 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New "Resume Playback" media library feature that's accessible from
the media library's functions page and the media library's mini-menu
(Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Thumb View).

Resume playback looks for the first unwatched media in the folder
and then resumes playback from that media.

If no media from the folder has been previously played, it will play
the first media in the folder (in alphabetical order by Title or
File name).

If the last played media in the folder is over the "Consider media
as watched" percentage threshold, the next media will play in
alphabetical order by title (if previously scraped), otherwise by
file name.

* Added support for new YouTube URL format when adding YouTube channels
as media library categories:

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/@CowboyKentRollins

* Double-clicking a TV show thumbnail in the media library's TV Jukebox
mode will now play the episode.

+ Zoom Player no longer requires "freeimage.dll" to load. The library
which is used to display the ".WEBP" image format is now loaded
dynamically as-needed, saving a bit of RAM while allowing Zoom Player
to start slightly faster.

- The media library's unplayed media counter will now adjust the background
box size if the unwatched media counter is 3 digits or more.

- Fixed a bug that prevented the media library's right/left bump actions
from working after a PC was not reset for over a month.

- Some information was not displayed correctly in the media library for
YouTube channels containing the "|" character in their channel name,
video names or video description.

- Fixed a bug causing ".df" definition files not to save properly when playing
from shared network paths (e.g. "\\my_server\shared_folder\media.mkv").


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.1:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17.2 beta 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New "Filter by Star Rating" media library feature.
Filtering by Star Rating allows you to filter TV and Movie categories
based on the media's Star Rating.

You can easily customize each media's star rating to your own personal
value using the integrated metadata editor, accessible by right-clicking
a media's thumbnail or through the media library's functions page.

* New "Filter by Content Rating" media library feature.
Filtering by Content Rating allows you to filter TV and Movie categories
based on the MPAA rating assigned to the TV Show or Movie, for example
"PG-13" or "TV-MA".

* New "Hide Mouse Cursor in Windowed mode" setting (Adv. Options /
Interface / Mouse / Setting) that allows the mouse cursor to auto-hide
even when playing in a window (disabled by default).

- Wrote a work-around for a bug in Media Portal's TS File Reader filter
to prevent Zoom Player from freezing on re-play.

The bug prevents ZP from seeking to 0 and re-playing by returning
invalid media position values, requiring the media to be fully reloaded.

- Under some conditions, the media library's filter function would not
highlight any of the available filtering options and would draw the
scrollbar widget in the wrong position.

- Under some conditions, the media library's filter function would not
bring the active filtering mode into view.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.1:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17.2 beta 3 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Support for a new YouTube LIVE URL structure, usually used
when sharing a video the YouTube mobible app.

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/live/L5QXreqOrTA?feature=share

* New "Edit Last Played" option added to the windowed play
history's right-click menu, allowing you to manually edit the
"Last Played" field without actually playing the media.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.1:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 17.2 release candidate 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The Media Library category editor has been redesigned for clarity
and ease of use.

* The Media Library category editor can now be used to select and
re-order multiple categories in one click, making it much easier
and faster to re-order categories.

* The Media Library category editor has been extended with a
"Move top" and "Move bottom" buttons to more easily arrange
your category listing.

* New "Sort by Runtime" media library feature. In TV categories it
sorts by the number of episodes in a folder and in Movie categories
it sorts by the Movie's specified Runtime (not the media's duration
which may include additional content such as credits).

- Fixed an issue in the Media Library filtering function that
would allow entries with a similar enough Collection/Tag to
the active filter to be listed.

- Fixed a "Plugin ERROR #80004005" when trying to add a YouTube channel
to the media library category editor if the channel's URL contained
the "@" character, e.g. "https://www.youtube.com/@WeMightBeDrunkPod"


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.1:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v17.2 final has been released:

Highlights:


Redesigned Media Library Category Editor
New Media Library Sorting and Filtering options.
Quick-Resume Playback Media Library feature.
Support for more YouTube URL formats.
Important bug fixes.



Download ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml') : What's new ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml')

[Godwin]

Version 17.5 beta 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Two new settings (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation /
Customization) that allow you to override the poster image and backdrop
for Movies and TV show categories.

The backdrop setting is an easy override, just place a "backdrop.jpg" or
"fanart.jpg" in the same folder and Zoom Player will use it automatically.

Updating a movie poster image requires you enable the "Do not use scraped
image as thumbnail / backdrop" setting for each of the media library's TV
or Movie categories, otherwise the poster image will still use the scraped
image (due to image-caching maintaining a copy of the old image) and then
re-scrape the movie folder.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.2:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* A completely new IPTV (streaming live TV and VOD) interface (Adv. Options
/ Playback / IPTV) with support for EPG (Electronic Program Guide),
Channel Grouping and many customization options.

Some features (icons, automated EPG/M3U downloads, etc) are still a work
in progress and are not part of this beta.

* New setting (enabled by default) to automatically hide the control bar
when clicking the video area, making it much easier to quickly hide
the control bar.

* You can now edit the last play time and date directly from the media
library meta-data editor.

- Using unicode characters in the ISO Auto-Mount command would not save
the path properly after restarting Zoom Player.

- The Advanced Options "System Sounds" and "Audio" sections did not scroll
smoothly when using the scroll bar.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 3 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The IPTV interface now supports automatically downloading stream lists
and electronic program guide URLs every specified number of days.

* IPTV Stream icons are now downloaded automatically.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) allowing you to control the
Stream's icon size.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) allowing you to control
whether the Stream's text is resized along with the icon size.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to ignore grouping and just
display the entire stream list.

* New Settings (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to customize the IPTV
interface with your own color scheme.

+ If an IPTV stream list contains mixed information with some streams
lacking a group specification, all such streams will now show under
an "Unspecified" group. If only one or no groups are specified,
grouping is disabled automatically.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml (http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml)

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 4 has been released.

Download:
Zoom Player BETA ('http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml')


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The IPTV auto-updating EPG and Stream List downloads can now handle
".zip" and ".gz" archive URLs (e.g. "https://website.com/epg.zip").

* New Filter EPG feature on the IPTV interface.

* New IPTV setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that controls the
EPG font size.

* New IPTV setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to control whether
the EPG filter checks program description or only the program's title.

* New "Custom Action" button on the main window (near the top-left) that
allows you to set any standard Zoom Player function to the button.

By default this button opens the new IPTV interface.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface) that allows you to assign a
function to the new "Custom Action" button.

- The IPTV interface should feel a bit smoother (less flickering).

- In the media library's category editor, specifying a category name
containing unicode characters would not highlight the entry in
the category list after clicking.

- Media Title containing certain unicode characters (e.g. emoji) did
not show when loading some playlist formats (m3u, asx, b4s, wpl).


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml ('http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta.shtml')

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 5 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* You can now select IPTV streams as favorites and they automatically
show up under a "Favorites" group at the start of the stream list.

You can right click a favorite stream to re-arrange or sort your
favorites list or simply remove the stream from the favorites section.

* You can now hide IPTV groups from being listed by right-clicking the
group and selecting "Hide Group" or through the options dialog.

* Right-clicking an IPTV EPG entry will now show the program's description
and allow you to set a notification to remind you that the program is
about to start as well as specify that you want to automatically switch
to the program's stream in due time.

Notifications are remembered even if you close and re-open Zoom Player,
but they will not activate if Zoom Player is not running.

* New Hidden IPTV Group controls (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV).

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Bar / Timeline Area)
that allows you to control whether the timeline displays the current
playlist track number.

You can also toggle this setting through the control bar menu by
right-clicking the timeline with nothing playing (or middle-clicking
if something is playing).

* The Advanced Playlist Control interface is now accessible through the
right-click menu under the "Open Interface" section.

+ Optimized EPG parsing, improving load time by 5-15%.

+ The playlist editor's search feature has been enhanced to support
repeated search. Simply press Enter to cycle between all entries that
contain the searched term.

+ The Station Manager window now has an "X" in the corner to close the
window (previously you had to click the "close" button).

- The Media Libary's category editor's "Playlist" category option did
not display categories correctly if they had certain unicode characters
in the name (e.g. Emojis).


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 6 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* This feature has been requested by many. The ability to scale
Zoom Player's skinned windows to make them easier to use on
4K and 8K displays:

New Setting (Adv. Options / System) that allows you to resize
the current windowed skin by 200-800%. Please note that this
setting may not work well with some older Zoom Player skins.

* New button added to the IPTV interface that allows you to toggle
the EPG display on and off.

* New IPTV setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to hide old EPG
entries (programs that have already aired).

* New Search feature in the media library category editor.

+ Redesigned the media library category editor layout. Hopefully it's
clearer and easier to work with.

+ Pressing ESC with the player window in focus now closes the IPTV
interface window.

+ Pressing ESC now closes the "Patterns" interface instead of having
to cycle through every pattern.

- You can no longer set an IPTV program start notification or switching
to the live stream if the EPG entry is older than the current time
(has already finished airing).

- The IPTV notification message before a program starts will now remain
visible for several more seconds.

- Loading M3U playlists containing links to other M3U playlists, no
longer tries to insert the embedded playlists as part of the loaded
playlists, which can cause many unforeseen issues.

- Loading some M3U playlists in the playlist editor did not always show
the media's title.

- Opening a stream from the IPTV interface in fullscreen mode would hide
the IPTV interface in the background behind the video window.

- Under some conditions, the "Add Folder to Category" and "Remove Folder"
buttons in the media library category editor were enabled for Plugin
based categories which would have allowed you to mess up these categories
if you were not careful.

- When adding a new plugin based Media Library category, you can no
longer add duplicate entries even after renaming the category.

- In the media library category editor, you could press the "Remove Folder"
button when selecting the "Folders:" entry instead of an actual folder.

- Trying to use Ctrl+V to paste a search term into the playlist editor's
search field would result in "????" when trying to paste unicode
characters or emoji.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 7 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* You can now easily multiply Zoom Player's windowed skin resolution
from the skin selection dialog (press "N" to open) to better match
Zoom Player's skin to your monitor's resolution.

* You can now time-shift IPTV channels in the EPG by right-clicking an
EPG entry.

* New IPTV Safe mode setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that
blocks access to Hiding Groups, Adding/Modifying favorites and
EPG Time Shifting.

+ Zoom Player will load slightly faster when using a multiplied
resolution skin.

+ Zoom Player's title text now scrolls if there is no room to show
the entire text.

- Filtering the media library by Genre stopped working.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Ceppo]

Does Zoom Player support Plugin development?

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 8 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!

* New Wakeup on LAN feature (Adv. Options / System) that allows you to
turn on PCs. This feature is extremely useful when using NAS (Network
Attached Storage) devices as your source for the media and you only
want to turn them on when using Zoom Player.

With this new feature, you can specify multiple MAC addresses to wake
several PCs and you can trigger the wake-up action with a choice of
conditions such as:

1. When starting Zoom Player
2. When opening the Media Library
3. When opening the File Navigator

If there are other use-cases where you would want Zoom Player to
wake-up remote PCs, let me know.

* New button on the IPTV Interface to toggle 50% window transparency.

* New IPTV setting to merge duplicate channels. This can be useful
if you're using multiple EPG files/links that contain EPG info
on the same channel.

* New IPTV setting (enabled by default) to keep the IPTV interface
window on top of other windows and applications while Zoom Player
is in fullscreen mode.

* New IPTV setting to control the screen ratio between the stream list
and the EPG. The default value is 1:1.5 (Making the EPG 150% wider
than the stream list).

* If an IPTV channel doesn't have a logo in the M3U playlist file,
Zoom Player now tries to use an icon from the EPG XML file and
caches the logo so it shows even if you keep the EPG panel closed.

+ To prevent distracting confirmation messages popping up, the IPTV
interface no longer prompts you to update the list once an IPTV M3U
playlist or XML EPG finished downloading, instead it will enable a
refresh button which you can click at your leisure.

+ Enhanced IPTV stream list keyboard navigation.

+ When opening the IPTV interface with the EPG hidden, the EPG data will
not load until the EPG section is opened which results in the IPTV
interface becoming accessible faster.

+ When loading IPTV playlists, if a channel does not contain ID
information, Zoom Player will try to match EPG entries based on
the channel name instead.

+ IPTV channel logos should appear faster if there are broken links in
the M3U playlist file.

+ Closing and opening the IPTV interface window now restores the previously
opened group layout.

- Resizing the IPTV interface window could leave trails on screen until
the stream list was scrolled.

- Right clicking a history entry and selecting "copy" in the playback
history interface returned a jumble result when copying links.

- The scroll bar on the description section of the IPTV program information
dialog accessible by right-clicking an EPG program did not show/hide
properly based on the window size.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Does Zoom Player support Plugin development?

Yes, Zoom Player supports several different types of plugins", for example, here's a plugin for the media library's YouTube plugin:
https://github.com/bLightZP/Delphi-YouTube-Channel-parsing-plugin-for-Zoom-Player

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 9 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Added a clock to the top of the IPTV's Electronic Program Guide section.

* Added a button to clear the IPTV channel logo cache (Adv. Options /
Playback / IPTV). Clearing the logo cache forces Zoom Player to
re-download the channel icons.

+ If an IPTV channel doesn't have a logo or ID in the M3U playlist file,
Zoom Player now tries to use an icon from the EPG XML file based
on the channel name (or partial name) and caches the logo so it shows
even if you keep the EPG panel closed.

+ IPTV Stream Channel -> EPG matching by Channel name (when a Channel ID
is not present) now works when the EPG contains multiple channel names
for the same channel.

+ IPTV Stream Channel -> EPG matching by Channel name (when a Channel ID
is not present) now matches even if there is an uppercase/lowercase
mismatch in the name or the EPG contains only a partial name.

+ IPTV Stream Channel -> EPG matching by Channel name is now automatic if
no EPG data was found using the Channel's ID.

+ The IPTV section of the options dialog is now a lot more informative
with regards to the Playlist/EPG download status (or failure).

+ Closing and re-opening the IPTV interface will now maintain the
EPG listing.

- Refreshing the IPTV list after a new Playlist or EPG finished downloading
should now maintain open groups and EPG listing.

- Fixed a bug that prevented some IPTV channel logo from saving properly
and may have even caused the wrong icon to show up for some channels.

- The IPTV Stream list did not display correctly if specifying a DPI value
higher than 100% in Zoom Player's options.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 beta 10 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Support for IPTV Archive playback. For channels that support it,
double-click the program to start playing it. You can easily identify
Archive supporting channels by the icon next to their name.

There are multiple implementations of IPTV Archive support and I did
my best to make sure all were covered, but if something is not working
as intended, let me know on Zoom Player's sub-reddit.

* New IPTV Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that clears the
playlist before streaming. This setting is enabled by default,
disabling it adds the channel to the playlist and play it without
clearing the playlist.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) to prevent embedded
playlists (playlist files within playlist files) from loading when
Zoom Player loads a playlist. This setting is enabled by default as
embedded playlist can lead to unfortunate infinite-loops cases and
other stability problems.

+ Playing media from the Advanced Playlist Control now ensures the newly
played item is visible in the Playlist Editor.

+ I Didn't like the behavior of the new setting (enabled by default)
that automatically hide the control bar when clicking the video area.
What annoyed me was that it was canceling my action, so if I wanted
to pause the video, it would ignore the pause action and just hide
the control bar. Now I adjusted this feature to hide the control bar
and not block the intended action.

- Fixed a bug that caused the IPTV caches to get wiped clear when Zoom
Player was pruning the media library thumbnail and meta-data cache.

- Playing an entry from the Advanced Playlist Control interface no longer
loses the entry's selection.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 release candidate 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Opening the IPTV interface for the first time now offers you the option
to automatically download free, child-friendly, publicly available IPTV
channels from around the world through the Free-TV project:
https://github.com/Free-TV/IPTV

* Using the "Play Stream" button on the IPTV interface will no longer try
to play an EPG program and will always try to play the channel live.

* New "Play Program" button on the IPTV interface. The "Play Program"
button is used to play archived IPTV programs. If the channel does not
support archive playback or if the selected program is no longer
(or not yet) archived, the "Play Program" button will remain disabled.

* New "Add Free Channels" button (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that
adds free, child-friendly, publicly available IPTV channels from around
the world through the Free-TV project.

* You can now control outdated EPG programs background colors
(Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV), making it easier to distinguish
which programs have already aired.

* Support for more IPTV Archive playback schemes (including "Flussonic").

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to specify the symbol
used to highlight archive channels in the IPTV stream list.

- No longer marking IPTV channels as archive if their "catchup-days"
value is "0".

- The Playlist Editor's search box did not support unicode characters.

- You can now use Ctrl+V to paste Unicode text into the Playlist Editor's
search box (including special characters such as Emoji).

- Fixed a bug that could cause Zoom Player to freeze when trying to
play YouTube URLs containing a space character after the URL.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 18 release candidate 2 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* New IPTV color-highlighting for the playing channel and program
(on channels that support archive playback). You can tweak the
colors in the options dialog.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to hide outdated archive
channel EPG entries that are too old to stream.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) that specifies the
default Playlist Load / Save folder. If nothing is specified, the standard
windows supplied path is used.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) that controls whether
Zoom Player should ask you for a confirmation when you clear the playlist.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface) to control whether text that
has no room to display fully starts scrolling. Currently this only
applies to the main window's title text.

+ The IPTV EPG files are now loaded and parsed in a background thread. This
means that the interface should open quickly and you can close it even
before the EPG data is finished parsing so the entire interface should
feel faster.

This change should also fix issues caused when Windows thinks Zoom Player's
window has become unresponsive while parsing EPG data (for example, on some
systems I got reports that the IPTV window would lose it's "on top" value).

- Trying to play a video with an external audio track, for example:
"myvideo.mkv" and "myvideo.mp3" in the same folder with the "Load External
Audio tracks" setting enabled, resulted in a lot of instability.

I rewrote the whole interface and now it's much more stable. Please note
that this feature also requires Zoom Player's DSP filter to be enabled
(Adv. Options / Playback / Audio - Enable Internal DSP Filter).

- The Playlist Editor's "Load Playlist" feature accidentally listed media
files instead of playlists by default.

- The Folder Browser dialog should no longer appear partially off-screen or
hidden by the task bar.

- Fixed an IPTV EPG Filtering issue where entering a value into the
filter box and then switching to another channel would make it impossible
to clear the filtering value.

- Under some conditions, the play history fullscreen navigation interface
could show a value of "00:00:-1" for the last play position.

- When using a non-default font, the play history last play position could
mess with the alignment of the file/url.

- IPTV Logo caching from EPG files did not work properly for some entries
based solely on channel name.

- Playing too many broken URLs or files is sequence could have resulted in
play history entries being generated even though nothing was played.

- Reduced the chances of showing IPTV EPG information for the wrong channel
when using badly crafted playlist or EPG sources.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 17.5:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_18.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v18 final has been released

Zoom Player v18 final has been released:

Highlights:


IPTV playback with Electronic Program Guide and free channels.
Custom Action button.
Skin Resolution multiplier for 4K and 8K screens.
Wakeup On LAN.
Redesigned Media Library Category Editor.
Easy Media Library Thumbnail and Backdrop override.
Enhanced playlist search.
Important bug fixes.




Download ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml') : What's new ('https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml')

[Godwin]

Version 19 beta 1 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Zoom Player has integrated libVLC, the media engine used by the
VLC media player. This integrating means that several new features
that were unique to VLC are now available in Zoom Player, leveraging
the reliability of VLC with Zoom Player's powerful and customizable
user interface.

In theory, Zoom Player's default choice of Microsoft's DirectShow
media engine is superior to libVLC in a lot of ways. DirectShow is
a lower-level, allowing me to develop unique features that are
impossible to do with libVLC. At the same time and due to it's
complexity, there may be cases where libVLC can be more reliable
than DirectShow.

By default only BluRay discs play using libVLC due to libVLC's support
for playing BluRay discs with menus. However, since this is Zoom Player
you're reading about, the ultimate choice of which engine to use is up
to you!

You can enable libVLC specifically for BluRay discs, IPTV streaming,
media playback (by file extension) and open-ended streaming (by URL,
for example "youtube") under the new advanced options section (Adv.
Options / Playback / libVLC).

To use libVLC you must either install the latest version of the 32bit
VLC player or install libVLC from the install center (it does not
conflict with existing VLC installations).

Most Zoom Player features are compatible with the new media engine:

- BluRay Playback with Menus!
Enabled by default, opening a drive, folder or the "index.bdmv" file
begins BluRay playback. Menus are navigated using the standard navigation
keys (up/down/left/right Arrows + Enter keys). The same limitation that
apply to playing BluRay discs in VLC applies when using the libVLC media
engine in Zoom Player, along with any glitches.

This means that you must have Java installed for the BluRay menus to work
and that playing encrypted discs will not work by default. As for the
glitches, I encountered cases where 4K BluRay videos can freeze and
verified that the same issue happens in the original VLC player.

- Aspect Ratio Controls:
Zoom Player's powerful aspect ratio controls are fully supported.

- Subtitle Display:
Other than re-positioning the subtitles on-screen, most of Zoom Player
subtitle features should work great with libVLC.

- Add Subtitle Track on Drag & Drop / Add Sub file:
You can easily add subtitle files by drag & dropping files on
Zoom Player's window or by opening a subtitle file after the
video is loaded.

- Subtitle Synchronization Adjustments:
You can adjust subtitle synchronization through the standard keyboard
macros (Alt+Ctrl+"+" and Alt+Ctrl+"-" on the keypad).

- Color Controls:
Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue color controls are available.

- Audio Framework Device Selection:
libVLC is pretty flexible in it's audio device selection offering three
different frameworks (MMDevice, DirectSound and WaveOut). Zoom Player
makes it easy to choose the framework that works best for your PC.

- Audio Track Selection & Cycle:
Easily select and cycle between multiple audio tracks.

- Audio Synchronization Adjustments:
You can adjust audio synchronization using the standard keyboard macros
(Shift+"+" and Shift+"-" on the keypad).

- Virtual Video Editing with BluRay Movies with Menus:
The scene cut feature that allows you to virtually edit videos should now
be compatible with BluRay titles with Menus when using libVLC. However,
this feature has not been heavily tested so please let me know on reddit
if it's not working as expected.

- Play History (position, audio track, subtitle track):
Zoom Player's play history feature which can save and restore the last
play position, active audio, subtitle tracks and more is fully compatible.

- Play Rates (fast play, slow motion):
Fast Play and Slow Motion might even work on more media formats than
supported by DirectShow, give it a try.

- Load Embedded Chapters (Bookmarks):
Using libVLC, Zoom Player can read embedded chapters or bookmarks from
both media files and BluRay titles.

- Load External Audio Tracks for playing video:
Full support for one or more external audio tracks.

- Play Next Frame:
The next frame feature is fully supported.

- Screenshot:
The screenshot keyboard macro (Alt+"F") is fully compatible with libVLC
with the exception that the screenshot file format is limited to ".png".

+ And since this is just a beta, there's more to come!

* New "Pause closes unseekable live stream (otherwise ignored)" setting
that controls if Zoom Player closes a live stream when pausing or
if the pause is ignored.

Previously the hard-coded default was to close the stream, the new
(configurable) default is to ignore the pause command.

* New button on the IPTV interface to quickly open the IPTV settings
page in the advanced options dialog.

+ To support chapters (bookmarks) using the VLC Media Engine, I had to
rewrite nearly all of Zoom Player's code related to managing chapters.
Please let me know if something broke. As a bonus, you can now use
emojis and other special Unicode characters in the chapter names.

+ Media chapters with no titles will now show a "no title" title.

+ The IPTV stream list group layout (open/close) is now saved and
restored even after closing Zoom Player.

+ The Custom Action button's hint when hovering with the mouse now lists
the assigned function and not just a general "Custom Action".

+ Cleaned up a few of the advanced options dialog pages.

- Trying to switch to the next audio track no longer tries to set
an audio track if there is only one track present (caused muted
audio for a second or two).

- Failing to play an IPTV stream will no longer highlight that
stream as the active stream.

- You should no longer be able to erase embedded chapter entries
(it didn't really do anything).

- Fixed all sorts of goofs that were possible through the chapter editor.



Previous changes since the release of version 18:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml

[Grimsdyke]

Are you maybe planning to support goodies like libplacebo too ??

[Godwin]

Version 19 beta 2 has been released.


Download:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml



Changes in this beta:


* New feature!


+ Changed feature!



- Fixed feature!





* Running Zoom Player on a fresh install will now asks if you would

like to enable "Performance Mode".



Choosing "Yes" does two things:


1. Enables D3D11 hardware accelerated video decoding in LAV Filters,

a requirement for smooth 4K video playback.


2. Sets the Video Renderer to MadVR, enabling HDR video support,

high quality video scaling, hardware accelerated subtitle

rendering and smoother motion.


Both settings can be modified in the advanced options dialog:

Adv. Options / Playback / Video


* A new "Help" section has been added to the right-click menu. The new

help section can quickly bring up the keyboard shortcut list or quick

usage guides for many of Zoom Player's popular interfaces.


* New keyboard macros to toggle libVLC playback:

Alt+"6" - Toggle libVLC IPTV playback (enabled/disabled)

Alt+"7" - Toggle libVLC BluRay playback (enabled/disabled)

Alt+"8" - Toggle libVLC Media file playback (enabled/disabled)

Alt+"9" - Toggle libVLC Streaming playback (enabled/disabled)


These toggles still require that you re-open the playing media

to take affect.


* The right-click menu has been extended with a new "Help" section.

The help section provides quick access to the keyboard shortcut list

and quick usage guides for most of Zoom Player's interfaces.


* The Play History dialog (Alt+"H") has gotten a face-lift, an option

whether to clear the playlist when playing from history, a button

that automatically sets the column sizes based on the current window

size and you can drag the play history window with the mouse by

clicking in any empty space.


* New "/infojson" command line parameter that can be used to query

a running instance of Zoom Player for information. The results

are returned in the windows clipboard as a UTF8 encoded JSON string.



This feature can be used in combination with Window's Powershell to

monitor and control Zoom Player entirely through the command line,

without requiring a TCP/IP connection to access the more advanced API.


Special characters are encoding using standard JSON character encoding.


If no additional parameters are specified, all fields are returned.

To get specific results, you can use a combination of one or more of

the following:



PlayState - A number representing the current play state where

0 : Closed

1 : Stopped

2 : Paused

3 : Playing


MediaName - UTF8 string containing the playing file name or URL.


Title - UTF8 string containing the playing media's title.


Position - The playing position in seconds.


Duration - The playing duration in seconds.


PlayIndex - The current playlist play index.


Playlist - UTF8 string containing the current playlist, each media

entry is specified as a part of a JSON array.


AudTrack - The current audio track number.


SubTrack - The current subtitle track number.


Example to get the playing media name, title, duration and position:

zplayer.exe /infojson:MediaName,Title,Duration,Position


+ The keyboard shortcuts list (F1 keyboard shortcut) is now a single

dialog which opens much faster and is no longer a part of the options

dialog which takes longer to open.


+ The "Toggle Control Bar" right-click menu option has been re-located

to the menu's root level.


+ If the playing media has only one audio track, it will no longer

be listed in the Stream Selection section of the right-click menu.


+ If MadVR is selected as the Video Renderer without being installed,

Zoom Player now notifies you and falls back to the EVR renderer.


- A bug caused some information dialogs to show the information in

the window's title and the actual title in the windows body.


- Fixed several libVLC related bugs, if you're still seeing issues,

please let me know on Zoom Player's Community:

https://reddit.com/r/zoomplayer



Previous beta changes since the release of version 18:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 19 beta 3 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* You can now use libVLC to cast the playing video to supported ChromeCast
devices. All you need to do is open "Adv. Options / Playback / libVLC" and
scan for the ChromeCast device. Any content played through the libVLC engine
will now display on the selected device. Please consider that it can take a
few seconds longer to open media files for casting.

* MPC-VR can now be selected as a Video Renderer for media playback. It is
not fully supported (subtitles, pixel-shaders and other unique features
for the video renderer will not work presently.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Control) that allows you to rollback
the current play position when resuming playback from the Pause state. This
feature is useful if you have an external receiver that requires a few
seconds to restore the audio when playback resumes.

+ If you previously used as Custom Video Renderer for media playback, you must
re-select the custom option (Adv. Options / Playback / Video).

+ Using the Next/Previous Track features now ensures the newly loaded track
is visible in the playlist editor.

+ Cleaned up some dialogs that had elements that were too close together,
especially under Windows 11.

- Scraping TheMusicDB should work once again.

- When Zoom Player's DSP filter is unable to connect to the audio renderer,
the DSP filter is now removed so Smart Play will not fail (fallback to
Microsoft's method of choosing components can be unstable), increasing
overall stability for badly authored media files.

- Fixed a bug that caused the media library background image to be overlaid
twice with a slight offset, slowing down opening a folder in the media
library a little bit and causing visual ghosting effects (was really hard
to see with the default background image).



Previous beta changes since the release of version 18:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 19 beta 4 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The playlist editor has received support for multiple playlists
that you can instantly switch between. Multiple playlists are
loaded in a background thread so even if you use massive
playlists with 1000's of items, it should not have much of an
impact Zoom Player's load and close time performance.

Press the new multi-playlist button on the playlist editor (top
left corner) to add the current playlist, a playlist from a file
or manage the multiple playlists (remove, rename, reorder).

You can see me develop this feature live here:
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhQoJ0kkoA
Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GLUuymiz_Y

* New "Cast to Device" feature on the main right-click menu and
available as a keyboard shortcut (Shift+"/") that allows you to
Cast the currently playing media to a Chromecast compatible
device. This feature does requires libVLC is installed but does
not require you to play the current media with libVLC (the
playback engines automatically switch as the media is casted).

You can see me develop this feature live here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3eDBtunqZc

* New "1510" Zoom Player API message that is triggered when using
next/previous chapter. Returns the chapter's position in seconds.

- Fixed a bug that caused the background image to show for a split-
second when dragging & dropping a media file on top of the player
window.


Previous beta changes since the release of version 18:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 19 beta 5 has been released.


Download:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml



Changes in this beta:


* New feature!


+ Changed feature!



- Fixed feature!





* The IPTV dialog now allows you to filter the stream list by playlist name.

You can see me code most of this feature on this live-stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSjr8ExbZmM


* You can now define custom names for IPTV playlists and Electronic Program

Guide sources (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV). You can see me code this

feature on this live-stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSjr8ExbZmM


* New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / History) that allows you to hide the

"Recent" items section from the Windows taskbar button's right-click menu.


* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Mouse / Settings) that allows you

to specify the number of seconds to seek when using the mouse wheel while

hovering over the timeline area. The default seek distance is 5 seconds.


* New label for the skin selection dialog to make it clearer that you can

scale the skin resolution by a factor of 100% - 800%.


- Zoom Player's "Export Settings" function did not include 4 setting files:

1. Media Favorites (files and URLs).

2. Media Library TAGs.

3. Media Library Collections.

4. IPTV Favorites.


- Fixed a bug introduced in v19 beta 3 that prevented the mouse wheel from

scrolling through the timeline.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 18:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 19 beta 6 has been released.

Download:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Added support for the new H.266 VVC (Versatile Video Codec) format.
LAV Filters v0.79 is required for decoding.

Please note that VCC support is experimental and not fully optimized.
To properly support VCC in resolutions above 1080p would require
hardware accelerated decoding which is not currently supported by
any GPU or CPU.

* Added Equalizer and Pre-Amp support for the libVLC media engine, please
note that the values work a bit differently when compared to the
DirectShow Equalizer values.

* Preferred Audio Device switching (Shift+"A") now works with libVLC.
You can define you preferred devices in the advanced options dialog's
libVLC section.

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) that allows you to play
the next media file in the same folder when using the Del key to erase the
currently playing media (or using the home theater delete option).
You can see me code this feature here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display / Actions) that
allows to force the OSD Actions (Play, Pause, Volume, etc) to appear on
a monitor of your choice.
You can see me code this feature here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

* To support IPTV providers that require a specific user agent text to
access automated downloads, you can now set a custom User Agent for each
IPTV auto update entry (for both playlists and EPGs downloads).

* New "Configure" button next to the Video Renderer selection drop-down
list (Adv. Options / Playback / Video).

* New "exMediaVidRender" extended function that allows you to switch the
media video renderer at any point. As an extended function, this
functionality can be accessed through the command line or TCP/IP APIs.
You can see me code this feature here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr3FmIi8crI

* Selecting a URL based IPTV playlist or EPG entry in the options dialog,
now displays the full text in a hover-hint.

+ Using Zoom Player to browse the web (for example, using the "/browse"
command line parameter) now uses Microsoft's Chromium based WebView2
browser engine and only falls back to the old Chakra engine is WebView2
is not installed (available on the install center, comes preinstalled
in Windows 11).
You can see me code this feature here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

- The Play History editor and fullscreen navigation interface can now re-play
files with a path longer than 255 characters.

- The playlist entries in the IPTV stream list drop-down would get duplicated
after updated playlists were downloaded in the background.

- Pressing Alt+S to bring up the subtitle component's configuration dialog
did not show the correct window title in some cases.

- Pressing Shift+"B" to disable the subtitles caused the subtitles to remain
enabled when reloading the media, even if the setting to restore the
previous subtitle track was enabled in the advanced options dialog.
You can see me fix this code here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

- Fixed a really weird stability issue with the IPTV window that could have
caused a freeze when trying to close the window and stream logos to never
appear.

- Detaching the control bar, moving it to another monitor and then hovering
with the mouse pointer over the timeline area would show the current
position indicator window on the wrong monitor.

- With the "Show all filters in Stream Selection sub-menu" setting enabled,
the right-click's "Stream Selection" section would show a small cosmetic
glitch (an empty section).

- Setting the YouTube Channel media library plugin's "channel list strategy"
to "Use 'upload' playlist" did not list the videos returned by YouTube in
the correct air date order and the air date was not displayed at all.



Previous beta changes since the release of version 18:
http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml

[Godwin]

Version 19 release candidate 1 has been released.


Download:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml



Changes in this beta:


* New feature!


+ Changed feature!



- Fixed feature!





* MPC-VR can now be selected as a Video Renderer for media playback. Some of

this video renderer's features are not yet supported (e.g. pixel-shaders).

But subtitles and Dolby Vision support do work thanks to the help of

Chetan Ullal and his work on the MPC-VR Subtitle Helper component:

https://github.com/Chetan-Ullal/MPC-BE-SubtitleHelper/releases


* Added support for 2 more IPTV archive playback modes.


* The IPTV EPG (Electroic Program Guide) will now add EPG "No Info" entries

for missing time blocks, allowing archived playback for these time blocks.

You can see me live coding this feature here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQldufSuJfU


* Enabling IPTV's "Safe Mode" now hides the IPTV settings button shortcut

from the IPTV interface.


* New "exSetAudioBalance" extended function (not assigned to any key) that

can be used to specify an exact balance percent value from "-100" (left)

to "100" (right). A value of "0" resets the balance changes.

Please note that using this function will not update the balance widget

in the user interface, only the actual audio balance on the output device.


* New setting on the media library's YouTube plugins (disabled by default)

to filter videos shorter than a specified number of seconds with a default

value of 62 seconds (to hide shorts).

You can see me live coding this feature here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7V_F62j4C4


* New "Activities" search strategy option on the media library's YouTube

plugins. I was hopeful the "Activities" entry point into YouTube's DATA

v3 API would provide more reliable results, but it seems limited to

uploads in the last 2 months and some uploads will simply not show up.


+ The media library's YouTube Playlist plugin now retrieves the playlist,

channel name and thumbnail automatically. Since the playlist image usually

reflects the last uploaded video, the plugin will use the channel's

thumbnail for the playlist instead, but you can disable this behavior

in the plugin's configuration dialog.


Previously you had to manually specify the playlist name and a generic

thumbnail was used.



You can see me live coding a portion of this feature here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7V_F62j4C4


+ The options window's search feature does a better job at highlighting the

selected element from the search result.


+ Opening the play history dialog (Alt+"H") for the very first time now uses

reasonable initial values for the columns.


+ The default mouse wheel function on new install is now set to volume

adjustments instead of the previous default that Zoomed in/out.


+ The "Please upgrade" dialog now shows the current Zoom Player version.


- Fixed a bug introduced in one of the v19 betas that prevented a

URL from being replayed through the play history interfaces.


- When creating a media library YouTube channel with an "@" channel name

prefix, for example "https://www.youtube.com/@zptechnology", YouTube

can return multiple channels if they share the same name. The fix

now checks all the channel to make sure their customURL field matches

the name in the specified URL.


- The Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display / Actions) that

allows to force the OSD Actions (Play, Pause, Volume, etc) to appear on

a monitor of your choice did not work correctly, showing the OSD on the

same monitor as the player window instead.


- Using Shift+"/" to Cast a video using libVLC accidentally forced all the

next videos to play using the libVLC media engine until Zoom Player was

restarted.


- Fixed a few cases where changing the current play position was not shown

correctly in the active playlist entry.


- When playing media of unknown video resolution, the timeline will no

longer display "0x0" if you enabled resolution display on the timeline.


- Playing audio-only media files using the libVLC engine did not show

the audio mode TAG display. Please note that audio-only media detection

using the libVLC engine is based on the media file's extension, for

example ".mp3" or ".wav".




Previous beta changes since the release of version 18:

http://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew_beta_19.shtml