Software-update: Zoom Player 19.0

Inmatrix heeft versie 19.0 van Zoom Player uitgebracht, een mediaspeler met uitgebreide mogelijkheden. Zoom Player is verkrijgbaar in de smaken Free en Max. De prijs voor een Max-licentie is net geen 38 euro. Op deze pagina worden de verschillende versies tegen elkaar afgezet. De changelog voor deze uitgave kan hieronder worden gevonden.

Zoom Player has integrated libVLC, the media engine used by the VLC media player. This integration 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 versatile 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 integration, allowing me to develop unique features that are impossible to do with libVLC. At the same time and due to its 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+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.Casting! 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.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).Audio Framework Device Selection: libVLC is pretty flexible in its 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).Equalizer & Pre-amp: Please note that the values work a bit differently when compared to the DirectShow Equalizer and the two don't sound the exactly same when switching media engines.Preferred Audio Device switching (Shift+A): Works like the DirectShow version, but requires you to select the audio devices separately on the libVLC options page.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.Screenshots: The screenshot keyboard macro (Alt+F) is fully compatible with libVLC with the exception that the screenshot file format is limited to ".png".SHOUTcast Radio Streaming: While supported, using the DirectShow media engine provides a superior experience.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 current GPU or CPU (next-gen support has been announced).Added MPC Audio Decoder Smart Play profiles for many supported audio Codecs.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 and Part 2.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.Running Zoom Player on a fresh install will now asks if you would like to enable "Performance Mode". Choosing "Yes" does two things:Enables D3D11 hardware accelerated video decoding in LAV Filters, a requirement for smooth 4K video playback.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 / VideoMPC-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, subtitle synchronization, video rotation and Dolby Vision do work thanks to the help of Chetan Ullal and his work on the MPC Subtitle Helper componentThe hint pop-up that appears when hovering with the mouse cursor over a skinned user interface button now includes the keyboard macro used to activate the button.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 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 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.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.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 where0 : Closed1 : Stopped2 : Paused3 : PlayingMediaName - 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,PositionNew "Pause closes unseekable live stream (otherwise ignored)" setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Contrls) that controls whether Zoom Player closes a live stream when pausing or if the pause action is ignored. Previously the hard-coded default was to close the stream, the new (configurable) default is to ignore the pause command.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,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.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.In order to clear up some screen real estate, I added a new setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that hides the EPG program end time. This setting is enabled by default, but can be disabled to restore the previous program listing style.You can now press Ctrl+C with an IPTV EPG program selected to copy the program name to the Windows Clipboard.New button on the IPTV interface to quickly open the IPTV settings page in the advanced options dialog.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).Selecting a URL based IPTV playlist or EPG entry in the options dialog, now displays the full text in a hover-hint.The media library YouTube plugins can now detect Live and Upcoming videos and display this information on the thumbnail.The media library YouTube plugins now filter out private videos.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.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.New "Configure" button next to the Video Renderer selection drop-down list (Adv. Options / Playback / Video).New "Configure" button in the Advanced Options' Audio Renderer selection dialog. Mainly useful when using the MPC Audio Renderer option.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.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 "fnMPCVRinfo" Zoom Player function to toggle MPC-VR's video rendering information overlay. The new function is assigned by default to the Ctrl+J keyboard macro.New "1510" Zoom Player API message that is triggered when using next/previous chapter. Returns the chapter's position in 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%.

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+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.Casting! 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.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).Audio Framework Device Selection: libVLC is pretty flexible in its 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).Equalizer & Pre-amp: Please note that the values work a bit differently when compared to the DirectShow Equalizer and the two don't sound the exactly same when switching media engines.Preferred Audio Device switching (Shift+A): Works like the DirectShow version, but requires you to select the audio devices separately on the libVLC options page.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.Screenshots: The screenshot keyboard macro (Alt+F) is fully compatible with libVLC with the exception that the screenshot file format is limited to ".png".SHOUTcast Radio Streaming: While supported, using the DirectShow media engine provides a superior experience.