Download Zoom Player 6.0 beta 2

The first beta release of version 5.50 of Zoom Player was released three and a half months ago. A second beta was released yesterday, but because the list of changes is now quite large, the developers have decided to immediately increase the version number to 6.0. Zoom Player is normally available in Standard, Professional and WMV Professional flavors, which obviously have different features and prices. 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. This is an early beta release by the way. The public release is expected early next week, and the free standard version is not available at this time. Below you can see what has changed since the previous release:

Changes from v5.50 beta 1:

• Since a lot of people don’t appreciate the changes microsoft made to Windows Vista with its UAC limitations, the Zoom Player installer now lets you choose between two modes:
  Standard install where dynamic files are saved in the AppData directory and static files are saved in the selected directory. This is required when running Windows Vista with UAC enabled or running Windows XP with a limited user account.
  Legacy mode where all the files are saved in the selected directory. This is easier to backup, but wont work properly when running Vista with UAC enabled or Windows XP on a limited user account. With Legacy mode selected, the file extension association functionality is restored to Windows XP levels (UAC under Windows Vista limits some file extension association functions such as changing file icons).
• Zoom Player now warns you when it detects you are running in legacy mode under restricted file access (UAC in Vista or a limited user account under XP/Vista).
• New F8/F9 skin modes (equivalent to the Onyx Lite skin).
• New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video) allowing you to automatically hide Closed Captions when playing media files.
• New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback) allowing you to set the “On Play Complete” event (which triggers when a playlist has finished playing) to “Randomize & Replay”, which gives you another random play method.
• New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback) allowing you to limit remembering the last media position to media files longer than a specified amount of minutes. This is useful when you don’t want the last media position remembered when playing short media files.
• New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Audio & Subtitles) allowing you play media files with the subtitles not showing by default.
• New “Guard Dog” feature (Adv. Options / System). When enabled, the Guard Dog periodically tests that the Zoom Player process is responding. If the process stops responding for a specified number of seconds, the Guard Dog will close the player and start a new instance using a specified command line parameter list.
• The Media Library, File Browser and Playlist fullscreen navigation interfaces now offer a “Quick Search” option allowing you to more easily browse through large listings. The Quick Search option is accessible by navigating to the right and selecting the “Quick Search” entry.
• The Media Library and File Browser navigation functions have been restructured so that the sorting function is now part of a sub-menu.
• “Select All” and “Clear Selection” functions have been added to the Media Library and File Browser navigation interfaces as a sub-menu under the “Select” function.
• The Playlist navigation interface has been restructured so that the sorting method is now a sub-menu with more sorting options available (by Size, Directory, Date and Randomly).
• Pressing right on the Playlist history navigation interface now brings you to the top of the list (the most recently played item).
• New “exRandomPlay” function, allowing you to discretely set the Random Play setting to on/off (compared to the fnRandomPlay function which toggle between on/off).
• New “/Config” command line parameter. Using this parameter, you can specify which local (non-registry) configuration file Zoom Player should use. This parameter is very useful when running multiple instances of Zoom Player, each with a different configuration. If the specified configuration file doesn’t exist, Zoom Player will create one (using the default configuration).
  Usage: zplayer.exe “/config:z:\path to config file\filename.local”
  Note that the “” characters are required as this command line parameter contains spaces.
• New “/Func” command line parameter. This parameter allows you to instruct Zoom Player to execute functions directly from the command line.
  This parameter can also be used while Zoom Player is running, enabling simple command-line based automation.
  Example for always starting with the Main Navigator open: zplayer.exe /Func:fnMainNav
  For a full function list, see the Function List:
• New “/ExFunc” command line parameter. This parameter allows you to instruct Zoom Player to execute extended functions directly from the command line.
  This parameter can also be used while Zoom Player is running, enabling simple command-line based automation.
  Example for always starting with the Playlist Editor open: zplayer.exe /ExFunc:exInterface,2
  For a full function list, read the Skinning Tutorial:
• New “/MultInst” command line parameter. Using this parameter instructs Zoom Player to start another instance of the player even if Zoom Player’s multiple-instances setting is set to disabled.
• All screen saver settings have been moved to: Advanced Options / System / Screen Saver
• The internal screen saver has been enhanced to support image slideshows instead of the plasma background.
• You can now specify if the text information and animated streamers are displayed by the internal screen saver.
• You can now specify a network address for the uTorrent fullscreen navigation file tracker.
• Added support for the Microsoft DVD decoders (part of Windows Vista).
• Added support for the “ffds” XVID sub-type created by the ffdshow encoder.
• New “default” button next to the Archive Playback configuration dialog (Adv. Options / System & Files / Paths, Folders and Files).
• The DVD AutoGraph script format now supports a parameter that connects the Video Decoder’s Subpicture pin to the Video Renderer directly (to support DXVA with subtitles).
• The Color Control and Equalizer navigation interfaces have been redesigned to take less screen space.
• When setting the navigation interface’s line count, the Equalizer and Color Control interfaces ignore a value of “-2” as they are only 3 lines to begin with.
• The archive configuration now allows you to specify dynamic system paths. For example: “%programfiles%\7-Zip\7z.exe” x “%n” “-o%p” Instead of : “C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe” x “%n” “-o%p” The default values ​​have been updated and you can use the new default button to set them.
• The “.iso” and “.img” extensions have been moved from the executable extension list into the archive extension list. With the latest version of 7-Zip (www.7-zip.org) installed, you can now extract and play CD/DVD images directly from within Zoom Player. Make sure to press the default buttons (Adv. Options / System / File Extensions).
• The Main Navigation interface should appear much quicker now, especially when accessed while a video is playing.
• The “/X”, “/Y”, “/W” and “/H” command line parameters now function even if Zoom Player is already running, allowing you to re-position & size the main user interface window from the command line (previously, these parameters only worked when initially running Zoom Player).
• The Media Library and File Browser navigation functions have been re-ordered for increased usability.
• The File Association options dialog has been restructured for additional clarity.
• You can now specify a +6,+8 or +10 values ​​for the navigation interface line count.
• A bug in the archive extracting code could cause extracted archive to extract in the wrong directory under some conditions.
• When random play was enabled and only one file was playing, the “On Play Complete” event was called if the same file was opened twice.
• When extracting and playing the content of an archive file, the first file in the archive would be loaded twice in succession.
• Setting a custom aspect ratio with a “0” value could cause Zoom Player to crash with an invalid division by zero error.
• A sorting glitch was fixed in the file browser and media library navigation interfaces where the “Go to previous directory” option appeared at the bottom of the file list instead of at the top.
• When using the internal image decoder, Zoom Player can now detect badly named image files (such as PNG files with JPG extension). Supported mislabeled image formats include: BMP, JPG, PNG.
• Some MJPEG files may not have been detected properly by Smart Play.
• Fix for the Zoom Player Install Center where it wouldn’t recognize certain updates as up to date if they were installed to a unicode file path.
• The Zoom Player registration key is now searched for in both the Zoom Player directory and in the application data directory.
• Pressing “Del” to erase the currently playing file with other entries selected in the playlist would not remove the erased file from the playlist.
• ID3/TAG display of unicode file name would show “???” if the audio file had no ID3 data.
• ID3/TAG display of unicode file name would show “???” if the audio file ID3 data containing unicode text and the Windows country code was non-english.
• ID3/TAG display wouldn’t always update when loading certain audio file formats.
• When trying to select a DVD auto-execute software (Adv. Options / Playback / DVD / DVD Tools), typing in the “New” field would not enable the “Apply” button.
• Ejecting a drive while listening to streaming media could cause playback to stop.
• Using the “,” character as part of a chapter name would truncate the chapter name.
• When specifying a transparent color for the Timeline, loading a different skin that didn’t contain timeline transparency would not clear the transparent regions properly.
• Fixed a bug where applying a custom File Extension Association icon would not always work properly.
• Failing to load a media file with a background image enabled could cause the background image to display in an incorrect aspect ratio.
• The TV Pattern mode would incorrectly draw a red vertical line at some resolutions.
• The background image and circle pattern would not respect the source relative stretch feature when it was set to a specific monitor (the stretch value was applied to all monitors).
• Cosmetic fix for the navigation scrollbar widget being slightly inaccurate position wise.

[break]The following downloads are available:
Zoom Player Professional 6.0 beta 2
Zoom Player WMV Professional 6.0 beta 2[break]