-- Please Read: * Please go to: http://order.kagi.com/?47D Even if you don't want to donate, I want you to read the current situation the Inmatrix site and this program is currently in. --- What's new in v2.90: New : * Completely redesigned the default skin. The Brownish skin is still part of the distribution so if you favor it,you can just re-select it. * You can now Color-Tint any skin, simply open the skin selection dialog and modify the Red/Green/Blue values with either a positive or a negative value and click on the skin you want to load. * You can now access a DVD's Number Pad by pressing Alt+Ctrl+"0..9" on the keyboard (or through a remote). The only real use of this feature is for discs with hidden content that require number pad activation (Such as "Terminator 2:Ultimate Edition"). * New Media Library Navigator (Alt+"M") allowing you to group specified directories (even from different drives) into one virtual listing. Similar to the file navigator, this interface can be navigated using the following keys (or remote-mapped alternates): Left - Go up one Directory. Right - Play Selected File or Directory. Up/Down - Scroll through the List. Insert - Play all files within the selected directory or Play all files in a directory when a file is selected. Enter - Enter Directory or Play Selected File. PgUp/PgDn - Scroll a page through the List. Home/End - Go to Beginning/End of the List. * New Media Library Path Editor (Shift+"M") allowing you to select the paths used by the Media Library Navigator as a Virtual Drive. * New "/MEDIANAV" command line parameter which starts Zoom Player with the Media Library Navigator opened. * New Toggle (Options -> Key Toggles) allowing you to select which Navigator to open when the Enter key is pressed while in Media Mode. Previously you could only open the File Navigator, with this toggle you can now choose from: 1. Disabled 2. File Navigator 3. Media Library Navigator 4. GoTo Navigator 5. Play List Navigator 6. Chapter/Bookmark Navigator * New Toggle (Options -> Toggles) allowing you to have the Control Bar aligned to the Tom/Bottom of the Monitor when in windowed mode. Set to either Top or Bottom, overrides all other Control Bar position settings. * New Setting (Options -> Settings -> Interface) allowing you to detach the Control Bar from the user interface. The position of the Control Bar in Window and Fullscreen modes are remembered independently. Can also be accessed by middle clicking the Control Bar. * New Registered Filter Manager Interface (Options -> Manual Filters) allowing you to select any registered filter(s) and unregister them quickly and easily. It further allows you to set the merit value on each filter which determines which filter has precedence when two filters of the same function are registered at one time (such as two types of MPEG2 filters). By adjusting the filters merit, you may be able to prevent filter conflicts to some degree. * New Setting (Options -> Manual Filters -> Extended VMR Mode). In preparation for DirectX-9, I've implemented support for Extended VMR modes. The VMR uses 3D hardware to accelerate video graphics. At present it depends on the Display Driver implementation as to whether VMR improves or degrades video quality (and yes, it can degrade it). This mode only works under Windows XP as it's the only OS with VMR support, but this may change with DirectX-9 (I'm not really sure). Similar to the overlay mixer, the VMR can fix aspect ratio modes for WMV9 and MPEG2 content. However, unlike the Overlay Mixer it does so without lying to the player about the actual video resolution, so playing back SVCD content will show the actual 480x480 resolution, but when setting the Aspect Ratio mode to "Derived" in Zoom Player, you will see the correct aspect ratio. At this time, there is no Overlay Color Control interface on the VMR, so you still need to use the Overlay Mixer to access this. I am told that DirectX-9 may change that, so we'll have to see. * New DVD Setting (Options -> DVD -> DVD Settings) allowing you to set the Closed Caption Background to Transparent (otherwise Opaque). * New Audio Balance (stereo) interface. Using the Alt+Shift+"," and Alt+Shift+"." keys you can move the Audio Balance Left to Right. * New Open Drive Function (Shift+"D") allowing you to open every file on the drive according to the allowed extension list (Options -> Values -> Other). The code also checks if the drive contains a VCD, SVCD or DVD disc and only opens the appropriate files accordingly. * If the Tray icon is visible, hovering the mouse cursor over it will now show the open File Name or DVD Volume. * New Command Line Parameter allowing you to set the keyboard file, Example: "c:\path\to\exe\zplayer.exe" "/key:c:\path\to\key\keyfile.key" * New Skinning interface (not implemented on default skin) allowing you to create an Audio Balance Control on the user interface. It works similar to the Play Rate Control and implemented through the BlanaceExData skinning function. * New Skin Button type allowing you to have a switch the active skin. * The CreateExButton Skinning interface has been expanded so you can Optionally specify the position of the button down bitmap rather than having it aligned to the right of the up bitmap. * New "TimelineCursor" Skinning Variable allowing you to set the cursor used for timeline seeking. * New Skin Constant "DVDVolume" allows you to write the DVD Disc's volume label. * New FillMask skinning helper function for easily filling skin areas with a mask of another bitmap (useful for backgrounds with transparent buttons). * OGG Audio files can be used as external audio tracks. * New Extended Function (exDVDNumPad) allowing you to activate a DVD's Number Pad through either the keyboard, remote or context menu command. * Shortcut ".lnk" files are now parsed and the files they are pointing to are now properly loaded. One use can be a DVD Archive where you create shortcuts in one directory for the VIDEO_TS.IFO files that reside in multiple hard drives/paths. * When Pausing, the OSD will now show the current position. Changes: * VASTLY! Reduced the Windows 95/98/ME system resources used by Zoom Player, Zoom Player now takes around 6% resources compared to around 30% v2.80 used. This of course doesn't have any effect on Windows 2K/XP as they don't have such a limited widget resource bank to begin with. * Zoom Player should load a bit faster now (not that it was slow to load to begin with). * The Custom Context-Menu interface has been completely revamped, there are no more fixed items and more functions are accessible. Backward support for the previous custom menu interface won't be supported, however, it doesn't take more than 2 minutes to manually convert. * The default Context-Menu for the Media, DVD and Tray interfaces has been sorted and expanded. * The Open Directory function is now "DVD-Aware". This means that if you open a directory with a VIDEO_TS.IFO file in it, the directory would be played as a DVD. * The Association dialog now shows you which extensions are associated and allows you to remove association. * The File Navigator interface now uses the Open Drive button when using the Insert key on a drive letter. * Separated the Custom Audio Device to Media and DVD so you can decide if it affects one or the other (or neither). * The Next/Previous Chapter buttons now act as Next/Previous Tracks when no chapters are defined. When Chapters are defined they will only change tracks if you are on the last/first chapters. This allows you to cross-chapter media files. * New Overlay Color automated verification system that double checks if DirectShow is returning the correct overlay color used in OSD transparency. This is required due to bugs in such filters as the WinDVD v4 Video Decoder which modifies the overlay color code for some unknown reason. * The vlLeft and vlTop skin parameters have been moved into the VolumeExData function and should no longer be used in future skins. * The rtLeft, rtTop parameters and RateData function has been integrated into a new "RateExData" function for further skinning simplification. * The skinning documentation has moved from the plasticblue to the brownish skin as it is updated to much all the new functions. * Several of the Red Error messages have been converted to an OSD message, especially those involving missing a DVD disc or wrong path. * The red error dialog now has a "Close" button on them, some people were unaware they could be closed by pressing Escape or Clicking on the dialog. * The Previous/Next filter file functions have been removed, if you plan to use a filter file, you must select it through the options dialog. * Screen centering functions should now center on the active monitor and not on the virtual screen coordinates for better multi-monitor support. * When the Extended VMR setting is enabled (see above) under Windows XP, the frame capture function (Alt+"F") is more accurate and captures any file format (including MPEG2, ASF and WMV). * Some speed up to the ASX play list file parsing. On a P3/733 it now takes around 40 seconds to load a 17000 entry list (verifying that each file actually exists), down from 233 seconds with the previous code. An improvement of over 500%. * Improved Overlay ColorKey detection. * The Minimize to Tray setting has been removed as it had the same function as the Tray location selection toggle. Fixes: * Wrote a DirectShow workaround a bug that failed to notify the player when exiting a Menu mode when playing from a Bookmark. * The Next Audio Track didn't work with the new OGM DirectShow filter. * Fixed a problem when the Override VMR setting was enabled and you simply wouldn't see any video. * The TransBitmapCopy function was not working properly. * Fixed a bug that could cause crashes on non-english versions of windows. * Fixed a problem that would alter the DVD Background Image aspect ratio. * Using the new DrawExText would cause position covered by the text not to react to mouse clicks. * Open Filter Property Pages should no longer mess up buttons with Hover Graphics. * Fixed possible crashes (multiple divide by zero) with Scene Cut files. * Clicking the mouse on the Play List Navigator could pop an error dialog. * Fixed a few possible crashes involving versions of windows that didn't use "." as a fraction separator. * Certain DVD Discs (ones without the "AUDIO_TS" directory) would not have been identified as DVD when Insert Auto-Play was enabled. * The "CopyTransBitmap" skinning function was faulty. * The Red Error dialog should now close properly when using a remote. * The DVD Background Image would not always return to it's correct aspect ratio after stopping a DVD. --- * The Complete Change list history can be found on-line at: http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_whatsnew.shtml --- End.