Zoom Player

[Godwin]

Zoom Player MAX and STREAM v22 release candidate 1 have been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* I have designed an entirely new Streaming Video Home Theater interface.
You can access the new interface by:
1. Using the right-click menu under "Home Theater".
2. Using the Shift+"G" keyboard shortcut.
3. Navigating through the home theater main interface (assuming
the Streaming Video setting is enabled in Zoom Player's advanced
options).
4. By assigning it as a button in the control overlay's advanced
options page.

What works:
1. Playing streams.
2. Playing VOD movies & series.
3. Playing archive (catch-up) programs.
4. EPG Grid & List view modes.
5. Multiple playlists.
6. VOD movies / series meta-data information and posters (basic).
7. You should be able to easily control and navigate the
interface using a mouse, keyboard or remote control.
8. The Streaming Video Home Theater interface is fully customizable.
From colors to element sizes, press the top bar's paint
brush button to begin customizing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JXbFB5OWyM

What's not yet implemented :
1. Search / Filtering.
2. Playing stream indicator
3. A prettier VOD movies / series thumbnail with backdrop display.
4. Manual refresh Playlist/EPG database button.
5. Fancy animations.

* Wrote a Video Streaming Player API meta-data scraping spider that
uses multiple threads to download and cache VOD meta-data such as
descriptions, cast, director, etc).
Specify how many threads in Advanced options under "Playback /
Video Streaming". The default value is "4" and when choosing a higher
value, consider how much you're willing to overload your content
provider's servers or even risk having them block your IP address.

* Video Streaming M3U playlist URLs and Player API JSON URLs are now
automatically parsed and cached in the background as soon as the
download completes to ensure the fastest operation when opening
the Video Streaming Windowed or Home Theater interfaces.

* Implemented a Video Streaming M3U caching system that automatically
caches M3U files as soon as they're added as a video streaming playlist
sources. Since cached parsing speed is over 200% quicker, initially
opening the Video Streaming Window or Home Theater interfaces should
feel faster when using M3U sources.

* The Windows keyboard shortcut to move the active window across multiple
monitors did not work well if Zoom Player had an overlay/window interface
visible, instead of moving Zoom Player, Windows' keyboard shortcut would
move the open window or overlay interface instead.

Another issue with this Windows keyboard shortcut is that it simply doesn't
work well if Zoom Player is in fullscreen mode and you are moving the user
interface between two different resolution monitors.

To work-around both issues. I've created two keyboard shortcuts:
Ctrl+Shift+"]" - Move user interface to the next monitor
Ctrl+Shift+"[" - Move user interface to the previous monitor

* A new feature to specify an exact subtitle synchronization value is
now accessible under the "Controls" section of the right-click menu.

* Added a "refresh" options to Video Streaming TV Series episode listing.

+ The Video Streaming subscription section of the advanced options dialog
has been redesigned to improve the user experience.

+ Optimized the Video Streaming playlist group name caching algorithm,
now 500% faster. Initially opening the Video Streaming Window or Home
Theater interfaces should feel faster.

+ Enhanced the Video Streaming Player API JSON caching to use a
specific caching format for each of the Live, Series and Movie
playlists, lowering the cache file size and slightly speeding
up the caching process.

- Zoom Player now trims spaces from the start and end of Video Streaming
Player API credentials to prevent accidental copy & paste misfortunes
that result in broken database downloads and streaming links.

- Using a Video Streaming playlist with identical group names used
across different content types (live/series/movies) resulted in streams
from groups with identical names to mix and show across multiple groups.

- Restoring previously opened groups when opening the video streaming
window interface did not work as intended if the video streaming playlist
contained multiple identical group names across different content types.

- When using the Video Streaming setting to sort the group names, the
category (live/movies/series) sorting order was incorrect.

- The Media Library's resume playback confirmation dialog failed to work
if the media's title contained the "|" (pipe) character.

- Fixed a cosmetic glitch in the default skin's playlist editor where
the search-box text could slightly overlay the bottom playlist entry.

- With the Video Streaming Windowed interface open (Ctrl+"G" keyboard
shortcut), pressing "Enter" in the EPG panel did not start playing
the stream.

- Fixed a crash when trying to display "WEBP" images renamed to "PNG".




Previous beta changes since the release of version 21.5.2:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2200.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player MAX and STREAM v22 release candidate 2 have been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!




* The Video Streaming Setup Wizard (Ctrl+Shift+"F12" keyboard shortcut)
has been redesigned to easily allow you to add multiple subscriptions
and URLs (links) to M3U playlists and XML Episode Guides and quickly
manage your subscription.

* The Video Streaming Windowed interface (Ctrl+"G" keyboard shortcut)
now supports displaying WebP icons/thumbnails and uses a place-holder
if no image is found or if an unsupported format is used (e.g. SVG).

Additionally, icons/thumbnails are now loaded concurrently using
multiple threads for faster performance.

+ You can no longer open the Video Streaming Window or Home Theater
interfaces if no playlist sources are defined. In such a case, the
Video Streaming Setup Wizard will open instead.

- My optimizations in a previous beta broke EPG listing in the Windowed
Video Streaming interface.

- Fixed a case where opening the Video Streaming Home Theater interface
could cause Zoom Player to freeze.

- When Zoom Player hid the mouse cursor on inactivity, it didn't re-show
the mouse cursor when opening several of Zoom Player interfaces using
keyboard shortcuts, making it very difficult to use the newly open
interfaces.

- For a reason I can't explain, the setting to allow YouTube interactivity
was enabled by default, preventing Zoom Player from processing mouse or
keyboard events when playing YouTube content through YouTube's official
JavaScript API.

Since this setting should only be enabled in very special circumstances,
I have decided to take the extra step of resetting this setting, allowing
Zoom Player to properly process keyboard/mouse events. You can re-enable
this setting in Zoom Player's advanced options as-needed.

- The Video Streaming Setup Wizard dialog was not properly adjusting to
high DPI displays.

- Fixed a bug where opening the Video Streaming Window interface and
selecting an active playlist, prevents the Video Streaming Home Theater
interface from expanding playlists to show their group listing.

- Fixed an issue where Video Streaming favorite groups would not list
any favorites added from an M3U playlist source.

- Zoom Player's screen saver no longer closes the Video Streaming Home
Theater interface.





Previous beta changes since the release of version 21.5.2:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2200.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player MAX and STREAM v22 release candidate 3 have been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The playlist editor's "Save Playlist" dialog now allows you to save to
the M3U playlist format using the "Save as type" drop-down menu.

* New Alt+Ctrl+"F1" keyboard shortcut to run Zoom Player's install center
and close the player.

* You can now access Zoom Player's options dialog from the Home Theater
main menu under the "System" section.

* The Video Streaming Setup Wizard is now accessible through the right-
click context menu.

+ The default "Fast Play" value has been changed from x2 (200% faster) to
x1.5 (150% faster). This change only affects new installations.

+ Refined and cleaned up the Video Streaming Home Theater interface a bit.

+ When saving playlists, the path mode dialog no longer appears and the
full path is saved by default. You can restore the path mode dialog under
"Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist".

- Unchecking the "Show timeline bar" setting didn't properly hide the
timeline bar, causing it to appear in the wrong position, obscuring
other UI elements.

- When setting the Action OSD (e.g. Play/Pause/Volume) to appear on a
another monitor using the new Modern Overlay style, it never appeared
while in Windowed mode and did not appear in a size relative to the
monitor's resolution while in Fullscreen mode.

- The "Reset settings to default" feature in the advanced options dialog
did not reset Zoom Player's pre-configuration, resulting in most settings
being reset, but not all and the use-type configuration wizard
(PC, HTPC,etc) not showing up on the next run.

- Fixed cases where DirectShow filter configuration dialogs could appear
behind the control overlay UI.

- Fixed a few places where media with a title containing certain
characters such as comma "," or pipe "|" would appear on-screen
as "," or "&pipe;".

- Hopefully (the issue was hard to reproduce) fixed a case where the mouse
cursor is hidden due to inactivity while the playlist editor is visible
and moving the mouse cursor over the playlist editor did not restore it.

- Fixed a Zoom Player TCP/IP API bug related to requesting the current
playlist when a media's title contained the pipe "|" character.

- The playlist editor's "Save Playlist" button did not allow you to use
unicode names for the playlist.

- Fixed a bug that caused the media library's meta-data cache editor's
Add Tag or Collections button to show the input box behind the editor's
window, making it inaccessible and blocking the rest of the interface.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 21.5.2:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2200.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player MAX and STREAM v22 release candidate 4 have been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The Video Streaming Windowed interface (Ctrl+"G" keyboard shortcut)
icon download/decoding/resizing code is now heavily multi-threaded,
freeing the user interface to be more responsive and icons to load
faster.

The updated code supports displaying WebP icons/thumbnails and uses
a place-holder if no image is found or if an unsupported format is
used (e.g. SVG).

If WebP icons are not showing, make sure you have Microsoft's WebP
extension installed:
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PG2DK419DRG

SVG icon support may come eventually if Microsoft decides to release
an extension that supports it.

+ The options dialog's search feature has been enhanced to search
drop-down menus and lists while no longer showing search result
entries for invisible controls.

+ The Video Streaming Home Theater interface should now feel a lot smoother
as icons are loading.

- Closing the Video Streaming Home Theater interface while icons were being
processed resulted in icons not showing when re-opening the interface.

- Re-opening the Video Streaming Windowed interface now properly restores
both the stream-list's active entry and the top index (starting item in
the list), ensuring the list position remains exactly as it was before
closing the window.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 21.5.2:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2200.shtml

[Godwin]

Announcing Zoom Player MAX & STREAM version 22.

Download Zoom Player MAX:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...download.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...download.shtml

Highlights:

• New Video Streaming Home Theater interface
• Many Video Streaming optimizations and enhancements
• Easily move Zoom Player between monitors
• Quality of life enhancements
• Important bug fixes

Previous changes since the release of version 21.5.1:
https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml

[Godwin]

Announcing Zoom Player MAX & STREAM version 22.0.1.

Download Zoom Player MAX:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...download.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...download.shtml

Highlights:

• Fix Video Streaming user interface freeze
• Quality of life enhancements
• Bug fixes
  

Previous changes since the release of version 22:
https://inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player MAX and STREAM v22.2 beta 1 have been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* Introducing Home Theater Video Streaming search!

I implemented a new "Search" section to the Video Streaming Home Theater
interface that allows you to search for Live Streams, Live Programs,
VOD Movies and VOD TV Shows.

The global "Programs" search is still not implemented in this beta
version, I hope to have it ready by the next beta in a week or two.

* I've added support for YouTube DirectShow/libVLC streaming based
on the yt-dlp open source project:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

yt-dlp is a command line tool that can be used to scan YouTube
video URLs and provide the direct Video/Audio streams.

In Zoom Player, you can now configure YouTube playback to use either
the official YouTube IFRAME Javascript player. DirectShow media
engine using yt-dlp or DirectShow directly (in case you want to
use a DirectShow component such as "3DYD Youtube Source").

You can pick the YouTube media engine under "Adv. Options / Playback" and
in the case of yt-dlp, you can specify the exact command line Zoom Player
uses with yt-dlp to list the stream URLs. Verify that the path to where
you have yt-dlp installed is correct and you have any yt-dlp prerequisites
installed.

For context, the official IFRAME Javascript player is the fastest and
most responsive, but since it's embedded in a Web Browser (Microsoft's
WebView2) and doesn't use the DirectShow media engine, it lacks support
for higher quality video scalers (MadVR/MPC-VR) and custom audio output
device.

* Beyond YouTube, yt-dlp supports finding streams on many other website
such as Instagram, TikTok, SoundCloud, Twitter/X and many many more :
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blo...portedsites.md

In the "Advanced Options / Playback" section, you can now specify
website URLs Zoom Player should pass through yt-dlp before trying
to play the stream.

Take into account that playback from such sources may not be perfect.

* Since I've already added support for YouTube, I took the next obvious
step of yt-dlp based stream URL parsing for major websites such as
"Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, etc." under "Adv. Options / Playback".

yt-dlp is compatible with many other websites, here is the full list
of websites supported by yt-dlp:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blo...portedsites.md

* New "/UseLibVLC" command line parameter that instructs Zoom Player to
try using libVLC as the media engine for the next media played.

* New "Mouse Hover" color effect for the control overlay's timeline.
You can fully customize the colors in the advanced options dialog
under "Interface / Control Overlay".

* New "Use fuzzy logic when indexing the Episode Guide" Video Streaming
setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video Streaming). Disabled by default.

In previous versions Zoom Player always used a fuzzy name matching logic
when trying to match the stream index of a Stream Playlist with the
Electronic Program Guide (EPG).

However, using fuzzy matching logic is a lot slower than a direct
match, causing the global program search feature to become impractically
slow when dealing with a massive amount of streams which is the reason I
disabled fuzzy matching by default and created a new setting which you
manually enabled.

For comparison, on the same playlist and program guide, using fuzzy
matching logic took over 2 minutes while a direct match took 4 seconds.
The results were identical since the provider's Playlist and EPG databases
were not too messy.

For greater context, regardless of using either a fuzzy or direct match,
the results are cached so fuzzy-matching's long processing time is only
triggered once per provider and repeated global program searches should
usually take 1-2 seconds on even large databases.

* I wrote new code to load the Playlist -> EPG indexing code to
run in a background thread as soon as you open either the Windowed or
Home Theater versions of the Video Streaming interface.

This means that performing a global program search should return results
a lot faster in most usage cases.

* New "2800" TCP/IP API command to force the next media to load with
libVLC instead of DirectShow. May not apply if DirectShow isn't used
to load the media.

+ Filtering streams (searching) in the Video Streaming Windowed interface
should be significantly faster, to the point you may want to disable the
"Filter streams when pressing enter (otherwise filter on each
key stroke)" setting.

+ The "Filter streams/programs when pressing enter" Video Streaming
setting has been changed to "Filter streams when pressing enter"
and now only applied to streams and no longer to program searches
which now always require pressing enter to search.

+ Scrolling through the Video Streaming Home Theater interface should
be a bit smoother.

+ Optimized EPG indexing by removing EPG channel entries that did not
contain any program entries.

+ When creating Windows Shortcuts to streams from the Video Streaming
windowed dialog's right click menu, if libVLC is set as the playback
engine for Video Streaming, the new "/UseLibVLC" command line parameter
will be included in the new shortcut to ensure Zoom Player uses the
correct media engine when the shortcut is launched.

- Fixed multiple bugs in the Video Streaming Episode Guide to Playlist
indexing cache which could inflate the cache file with duplicate
entries, slowing down future indexing and global program searches.

- Enabling the "Pre-load navigation gfx" setting (Adv. Options / Interface
/ Home Theater / Settings) could have triggered a crash under some
conditions, causing the home theater fullscreen interfaces to glitch.

- Fixed a crash when trying to use an external audio track with
Zoom Player's DSP filter disabled.

- Fixed a crash when trying to open the Video Streaming window and then
closing Zoom Player before the Video Streaming window had a chance
to appear.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 22.0.1:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2220.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v22.2 beta 2 has been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


+ Made several enhancements to the Home Theater's Video Streaming
virtual keyboard :

1. Double clicking in the search's text input area within the Video
Streaming Home Theater interface now selects the entire text.

2. Navigating the virtual keyboard using a remote control or
a physical keyboard should now be a bit friendlier with more
flexible navigation between keys and the input field.

- Video Streaming Home Theater fixes/changes:

1. Closing and re-opening the interface showed no streams.

2. Switching display mode to show the video as background instead
of a cut-out caused the background to mess up completely.

3. Movie search results now properly show the movie's description
and meta-data.

4. TV search results didn't show an episode listing until switching
between shows.

5. Some movies showed a wrong duration due to bad database input by
some service providers (entered minutes instead of seconds). I fixed
this by using a validation against an alternative JSON text field.

6. Fixed a crash when opening the windowed video streaming interface and
then opening the Home Theater video streaming interface.

7. Fixed a crash when trying to browse a VOD TV Show's episode listing
with some TV Shows that had a different way of encoding episode
meta-data information.

8. Program description may have not shown correctly or at all.

9. Search results are now returned combined instead of splitting the
results based on their playlist source.

- Performing a Video Streaming global program search now waits for the EPG
to finish loading first. Previously a search before the EPG finished
parsing would return partial results.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 22.0.1:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2220.shtml

[Godwin]

Zoom Player v22.2 beta 3 has been released.

Download Zoom Player MAX::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

Download Zoom Player STREAM::
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eam_beta.shtml


Changes in this beta:

* New feature!

+ Changed feature!

- Fixed feature!


* The Video Streaming Home Theater interface now displays large movie
posters and additional meta-data (actors, release date) info when
browsing the Movies VOD area.

* Added support for the APV format. Advanced Professional Video is a
high-efficiency, intra-frame only and visually lossless video codec
developed by Samsung for professional smartphone recording and editing.
It offers 20% better storage efficiency than traditional codecs, supports
10-16 bit depths, 4K/8K resolution.

Please note that APV playback requires LAV Filters v0.81 or newer. This
version of LAV Filters may not be included in this release due to bug
reports I've seen on it's forum.

+ Many small Video Streaming Home Theater interface user-experience
tweaks.




Previous beta changes since the release of version 22.0.1:
https://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomp...eta_2220.shtml