Download Zoom Player 4.50 RC 1

Inmatrix is ​​almost done with version 4.50 of its media player Zoom Player and has now released the first release candidate after four betas. The player available in the flavors Standard† Professional and WMV Professional† The differences in the three versions are in the price and options. The standard version is the only one that is free to use and plays the most common formats, the pro version can also be used to play DVDs and the WMV Professional version can also play DRM content. Inmatrix has not been sitting still and this release comes with the following laundry list of changes:

Changes from 4.50 beta 4:

• With the Gracious help of Milenko Mitrovic, The Station Manager can now fetch the Top-500 SHOUTcast radio stations (Internet connection required) and let you add them to the Station Manager or play them directly.
• Zoom Player now supports the PNG image format for Background Images, Folder images, Skinning Elements and the Internal Image Viewer (which now can also view Windows BMP files).
• New Control file (“zplayer.regfilters”) allowing you to automatically and dynamically register/unregister and set/remove registry settings when Zoom Player is opened/closed. This is especially useful for USB Flash Drives (UFD Devices), See here†
• New Setting (Advanced Options / Settings / Other), enabling you to have Zoom Player save its configuration in a local file within the Zoom Player directory (“zplayer.local”).
  The benefit of this feature is that it allows you to run Zoom Player from external devices such as USB Flash Drives (UFD devices) while maintaining your personal settings across multiple systems. See:
• New Setting (Advanced Options / Filter Control / Settings), allowing you to force VMR Video Renderers from trying to compensate for the Video Aspect Ratio. This setting can help prevent resize artifacts with certain video formats (similar to the VMR9 Resize Fix). You need at least Windows XP Service Pack 2 for this feature to work.
• New Setting (Advanced Options / DVD / DVD Tools) allowing you to have Zoom Player wait for “On NTSC/PAL/DVD Stop” executed programs to close prior to Playing/Stopping the DVD.
• New Value (Advanced Options / Filter Control / Customized Media / Settings) allowing you to disable Customized Media Playback for a list of specified extensions.
• New Command Line Parameter “/CLOSE” allowing you to close a currently running instance of Zoom Player from the command line.
• New Target Parameter on the CreateExButton and DrawExText skin commands allowing you to create Button and Text labels on the Control Bar (outside the Dynamic-Button area).
• New functions “fnIncPreAmp” (Ctrl+Home) and “fnDecPreAmp” (Ctrl+End) allowing to Increase/Decrease the PreAmp volume.
• New TCP/IP Messages 1010,1603,1703,1704,1753,5100,5110,5120.
• MSVCR70.DLL should no longer be required for playing back WMV DRM content.
• When Customized Media Playback fails to create a working graph for media files, standard mode will now retain the Audio and Video Renderer selection as used under Customized Media.
• Improved the Magnetic Docking code so now when switching locations for the interface, it looks to see which area has more space to display the interface instead of just switching when the original location is touching the monitor’s border.
• The DVD Next/Previous Chapter buttons now also act as Next/Previous titles when you’re currently playing the last or first chapters.
• Auto-Get of Media File Duration/Title should now work better with formats such as CD Audio, Monkey Audio, FLAC Audio and MPC.
• Playing Radio Stations will now show the station name on the Play List Editor if “Use Media Title” is enabled under “Advanced Options / Values ​​/ Play List”.
• Another change to how Zoom Player is opened when an external program tells it to start maximized. Now Zoom Player will just start in a regular maximized window.
• Removed the white border on the gradients pattern, it was bleeding and making gradients harder to evaluate.
• Fixed a possible cause for freezing when initially loading certain types of DVDs in VMR9 Renderless mode.
• VMR9 Exclusive Fullscreen Renderless mode should now work on secondary monitors.
• You should now be able to navigate DVD Menus in renderless mode using the mouse.
• Pressing Enter/Play on the Advanced Play List Control would not play the right file.
• Automatic Audio/Subtitle stream selection was not functioning properly if the Haali Media Splitter filter was not being used.
• “DVD Auto-Execute” values ​​should now properly pass parameters to the executed programs.
• You can now use negative values ​​on Text/Button skin positioning.
• Fixed more cosmetic skinning issues related to the “Auto-Size User Interface to maintain Video Aspect Ratio” setting.
• Sorting by “Date” was actually only sorting by “Day” and not the exact date.
• Loading a QuickTime “.MOV” file using the ActiveX component with the Zoom Player user interface set to auto-resize to the content source size should no longer show a cropped initial image. Now try saying that fast 3 times.
• Fixed a problem when Enqueue from external applications that could cause a ghost window to flash and possibly cause the Zoom Player skin to corrupt.
• Loading “ASX” play lists that contain certain character tags should now work.
• Having Auto-Size user interface to maintain video aspect ratio enabled would prevent resizing of the user interface in audio mode.
• Auto-Segment loading should no longer add files to the play list if they already are in the play list.
• Loading an ASX play list with non-UTF8 encoded non-english character sets should now work more reliably.
• Fixed a bug in the SendMessage API that would report a wrong DVD/Media mode.

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