Software Update: Zoom Player 4.00 RC1

After three beta versions, the first release candidate from the 4.00 branch of Zoom Player can believe it. This program plays the most common media files on the computer. Zoom Player is available in three different flavors: the free standard versionthe professional version which also plays DVDs and the new wmv professional version which can also play DRM content. For the last two, you have to pay 19.95 and 29.95 dollars respectively if you want to use it after the test period. The list of changes can be found below:

• New Stream Selection Interface (Only for the Professional Version) allowing you to automatically select Audio and Subtitle streams according to Language Codes, Stream Name text matching and specific stream numbers.
• Zoom Player will now try to load JPEG image files outside of DirectShow. It seems that DirectShow is very resolution-limited and even the best display hardware doesn’t support a video-surface with the resolution captured by recent Digital Cameras.
  The new JPEG Module uses a software bilinear scaler to resize the images, so quality should be better than standard image viewers, although a bit slower.
  You can disable the JPEG Module and let DirectShow try to load these images under “Advanced Options / Filter Control / Settings”.
• New TCP/IP external control interface. This interface is still experimental. The interface is similar to the SendMessage code currently in use, but allows you to send control information to Zoom Player and can be accessed accross a network.
  By default, it is set to off and can be enabled at “Advanced Options / Values ​​/ Interface” where a connection port can also be selected.
• Customized Media Playback Splitter, Audio and Video profiles can now blacklist themselves according to the file extension being played (previously you could only whitelist extensions).
• New Toggle (Advanced Options / Settings / Toggles) allowing you to choose how text is truncated to fit the desired space. This effect a lot of text elements within Zoom Player such as the Navigator display and ID3 display. The default setting is to “Vowel Decimation” which tries to remove vowels so that more text remains readable. The alternative is to cut the end of the text.
• The DVD AutoAR feature can now execute an external program when a DVD Aspect Ratio mode changes.
• New “/LOCKFS” command line parameter which locks Zoom Player in fullscreen mode (useful for Kiosk-Type operation).
• New Setting (Options / DVD Setup) allowing you to hide the Audio/Video decoder profiles that are not currently registered on your computer.
• New Settings (Advanced Options / Settings / Windows Media) allowing you to use AC3 Filter as an Audio Post-Processor for Windows Media DRM content. Make sure you have PCM input enabled in the AC3 Filter property page, otherwise it won’t work.
• New Setting (Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators) allowing you to select whether the Left Pane on the File and Media Library navigators is visible. When the Pane is invisible, the top-directory box will show additional details about the media category and drives.
• New Color Selection for Navigators Internal, External and Select Framing Colors (Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators).
• New Button (Advanced Options / Filter Control / Management / Registered Filter Manager) on the Registered Filter Manager allowing you to Re-Register the DirectShow filters that come as default with windows. This should help in such cases where a 3rd party program can destabilize the default system or in case you want to unregister all filter and restore your system to a default state.
• The LCD interface has been extended and can now be used to call Zoom Player standard and extended functions.
• Two new ID3 display tags “” returning the length of the currently playing file and “” returning the total duration for the entire play list.
• The ScanCode button (Options / Keys) now shows you when a multi-media key is pressed so you can now identify such keys and add support for them in the keyboard file using the “mcAddKey” function.
• New Keyboard Macro (Shift+”V”) to enable/disable the Internal Screen Saver. This macro uses the new “fnSSaverToggle” function.
• Zoom Player can now acquire WMV DRM Auto-Licenses as long as WMP has individualized the system (usually happens when originally playing DRM content).
• Zoom Player now supports VMR7 Windowed playback in Customized Media mode. If you previously used a customized renderer, make sure to update your setting.
• You can now use VMR7 and Overlay Mixer when playing WMV DRM content.
• Subtitles can now be viewed with WMV DRM content using DirectVobSub.
• The External Audio Track support has been greatly expanded. You can now specify an alternative search path for External Audio Tracks (Advanced Options / Values ​​/ Other), audio track naming is now more flexible, for example:
  • MyVideo.avi
  • MyVideo.english.mp3
  • MyVideo.spanish.wav
  • MyVideo.japanese.mpc

  All are valid names now. You can use any file format specified as an audio extension under “Advanced Options / Values ​​/ Extensions”.

• The Customized Media Playback configuration dialogs should now be a little easier to understand.
• The System Overview now lists the filter version numbers when the filter files contain them.
• The Alt+”A” macro will now also open the AC3Filter property dialog.
• Playing multiple VIDEO_TS.IFO file through a play list should now work again (as long as the IFO files are not looped in a DVD Menu).
• Clicking on a missing format link on the Basic Options dialog would throw a protection fault error.
• The /OpenDrive parameter would open a dialog asking you to insert a disc if a CD drive has been ejected and the drive then opened.
• The “/TRAILER”, “/KEY” and “/KEYDVD” command line parameters were broken.
• The gradient skin functions were giving bad results.
• Custom Media Playback should now work with WMV file that use internal scripting code.
• With Random Play enabled, items would play that were previously removed from the play list.