Zoom Player FREE 15 Beta 8 Media Player for PC Windows

YouTube:
The media library's new and direct access any of your favorite YouTube channels. On top of that, Global and Country-specific YouTube Trending videos in a variety of subjects and up to date YouTube Search results on any subject are just as easily accessible.
Playing YouTube content using DirectShow in Zoom Player was possible for a while now. Introduces YouTube's official IFRAME web based player (optional, can be disabled in the options dialog to restore DirectShow playback with its advanced hardware decoding and post-processing capabilities).
Music:
By connecting with the very cool TheMusicDB.com, Zoom Player 13 can automatically scrape Art and Meta-Data (description, release date and more) for Albums and individual audio Tracks. Even without the use of an online database, the internal audio scraper has been enhanced to extract existing meta-data from each audio track, ensuring all available audio file information is clearly displayed.
Subtitles:
Downloading subtitles in your preferred language(s) is now a piece of cake. By integrating with the very popular OpenSubtitles.org website, Zoom Player 13 can download the correct subtitle file for your media by matching the media file's hash (unique ID) with OpenSubtitles.org's database.
RSS:
You can easily integrate RSS feeds directly into the media library for easy streaming and staying up to date on all the latest in podcasting.
Streaming:
Streaming has been enhanced on every level with improved reliability, new fine-tuning customization features and user experience shortcuts to play streams quickly.
Plugins:
Many of the features discussed above are only possible due to the new plugin interfaces introduced throughout Zoom Player. This includes Media source plugins (YouTube/RSS), Subtitle download plugins (OpenSubtitles.org), Scraping plugins (TheAudioDB.com/TheMovieDB.org).
All these plugins are released as open-source with the code to be used as a sample for 3rd party developers looking to extend Zoom Player with new access to content.
What else has changed:
A lot more has changed in version 13, there were smaller features introduced, other features were enhanced, code was optimized to make Zoom Player load and run faster and bugs were squashed. To review the full change list, click here.
The Future:
There are interesting new features planned, including an enhanced JukeBox experience for music and music videos, a direct interface to SHOUTcast.com's internet radio station index, Torrent streaming and much more.

New feature:
New Pixel Checker-box pattern (Shift+P).
Changed feature:
The YouTube Search and Trending plugins will now display the video's channel name in the meta-data title area.
The Quick Search function on the Media Library and File Browsing fullscreen navigation interfaces now tries to use media titles instead of file names/urls when titles exist.
To prevent the media library opening in a confusing category, after editing the media library category list, opening the media library will always open in the category list (instead of cases where it previously opened in the media list).
Fixed feature:
Fixed instability (freezes/crashes/failure) issues related to the method used by plugins to share memory with the player process.
The Movie Database (TheMovieDB.org) scraper stopped downloading thumbnails due to a change in API handling of user agents.
Selecting media entries in the media library using the "Select All" or other multiple selection features would also select the non-media entries (Refresh/Load More/etc).
Re-ordering the playlist by selecting and dragging entries with the mouse cursor didn't work properly if the same file appeared more than once in the playlist (all same file name entries were accidentally selected and moved).
When Zooming to 4:3 on a 16:9 video, using the function, exiting Zoom Player did not restore the previous non-zoomed position, which could cause incorrect zoom value if trying to use the function again.
The bottom meta-data display on the media library for video files would show "Track ??" by accident.
Pressing the "Windows" keyboard key would trigger a quick search action and block certain key/mouse inputs from working.
The internal screen saver will no longer activate if display patterns in use.
Toggling the pattern display will now close the fullscreen navigation interfaces.

* New media library scraper that uses TheAudioDB.com's API to download album art and meta-data for audio files. If you previously created music categories, you will need to use the category editor to configure the category to use the scraper and then re-scrape the category. New categories will automatically use TheAudioDB scraper.
* New Alt+Shift+"U" keyboard macro to play a streaming URL directly from the clipboard. For example, right-click and "copy link location" on youtube video and then press Alt+Shift+"U" in Zoom Player to star playing the video. This open streaming link function is also available in Zoom Player' right-click context menu under the 'Open' sub-menu.
* New Setting (Media Library category editor / Configure Category) that specifies if scraper errors should appear in the meta-data overview display. The debug information was always enabled in previous versions and will now be disabled by default.
* TheMovieDB's scraper initialization code has been cleaned up so Zoom Player should start quicker, especially if there are network connection issues.
* You can now use the HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN keys in the Media Library's thumbnail mini-menu to quickly access one of the four mini-menu actions.
* As an extra security measure, the "DefaultSettings.exe" tool that helps you reset Zoom Player to its default setting now asks for confirmation before starting.
* The media library category editor dialog doesn't reset the category type each time the dialog is closed.
* Duration for audio files was not being displayed on their thumbnail.
* Fixed a case where multi-threaded DLL flag wasn't enabled which triggered random crashes and cause ZP to freeze on exist at times.
* Fixed a crash when switching navigation skins (this crash was introduced in one of the recent beta versions).
* The RSS plugin now tries to use the correct audio/video icons regardless of the media library category type.
* The "Configure" button on the media library's category editor's "Configure Category" dialog was always enabled even if the plugin did not support a configuration dialog.
* One of the previous beta versions broke scraping for the media's resolution, duration, display of media format icons and the thumbmail's border on the media library's TV Jukebox.
* The YouTube IFRAME player failed if the YouTube link included additional information (such as being part of a playlist).

# New
* The internal audio scraper now uses MediaInfo extract ID3/TAG information and display it in the media library's bottom information area. You will need to re-scrape your audio files for the new content to appear.
* New Alt+"/" keyboard macro to search for subtitles based on the currently playing video. You can access this function using the right-click context menu under the new "Download" sub-menu.
* New function to download subtitle file(s) for any selected video file. The new function is accessible using the right-click context menu under the new "Download" sub-menu.
* The fullscreen file browsing navigation interface has gained the ability to search for subtitles through the function menu.
# Changed
* The Alba's skin timeline design has been visually enhanced.
* The RSS feed media library plugin displays a system specific publish date and sorts the feed with new entries appearing first.
* To prevent accidental clicks, the eject disc drive keyboard macro has been changed from "/" to Ctrl+"/".
# Fixed
* The trial-ended message in Zoom Player MAX could trigger an eventual crash if left open for a long period.
* Setting "On Play Complete" to "Auto-Rewind" did not work with non-DirectShow playback (playback would loop instead of pausing on the first frame).
* Using the quote (") character in a media library category name would cause the category name to get cropped.
* Opening a ".url" pointing to a web page ignored the "HTML Interactivity" setting.
* Pressing "update" on the "Audio Device Filter Manager" dialog with nothing selected/entered would trigger a crash.
* Execute functions assigned to a Hot Corner click would not save the executed program path correctly for some of the corners.
* Opening an ""YouTube URL always used the IFRAME player even if it was disabled in the options.
* RSS Links containing the "#" hash character were not recognized as valid RSS streams using the new media library RSS plugin.
* Using the YouTube IFRAME player did not update the taskbar button and system-tray icon's hint with the video's title.

# New :
* New media library plug-in system allowing 3rd party developers to create media library categories based on content information provided by the plugin.
* To demonstrate the capabilities of the new media library plug-in system, an open-source project has been created to implement a 'YouTube channel' media library category plugin.
* New subtitle download plug-in system allowing 3rd party developers to create plug-ins that download subtitles for your media library collection.
* To demonstrate the capabilities of the new subtitle download plug-in system, an open-source project has been created to implement an 'OpenSubtitles.org' subtitle download plug-in.
* New YouTube IFRAME (web based) player support, providing official YouTube playback. All YouTube URLs automatically use the new IFRAME player interface. You can disable the IFRAME player support in the options to force Zoom Player to use DirectShow for playback (Adv. Options / Playback > Use YouTube IFRAME video player to play YouTube content).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Customization) that switches the media library's thumbnail view category list aspect ratio between Album Art (1:1) or Widescreen (16:9).
* New smart play profile for media files encoded with the DNxHD codec.
* New "Please Wait" window that pops when there are operations that are taking a long time (like fetching a YouTube channel's video list).
* The play history now saves media titles, making play history clearer, especially with network streams and media library plugins.
# Changes :
- Pressing the "Open Media Library" button on the media library category editor now opens the media library with the current edited category selected.
- The play history dialog will now display the recently played items first in the list.
- The play history dialog should now open significantly faster(nearly instantly), especially with a play history database of over 10,000 entries.
- The time display on thumbnails used to show videos with a duration of under 10 minutes as "09:30", this have now changed to show "9:30", saving a bit more of the thumbnail area.
- When opening the media library, the last played position for the currently playing media is now updated straight away (previously it would update when the playing media was closed).
- The Open URL function now tries to identify a URL in the windows clipboard. If a valid URL is detected, it automatically filled into the open url dialog, otherwise the last opened URL is shown by default.
# Fixes :
- Fixed a very rare case where opening a media file could trigger a freeze if the background thread that grabs the media's duration was active.
- Play history should now restore position for URL streams.
- Fixed an issue where playing a SHOUTcast/ICEcast streaming station and then restarting Zoom Player would not allow you to resume playing the previous station from the playlist.
- The media library's category list would use the wrong aspect ratio thumbnail in some cases where the active category was password protected.
- Fixed an issue where the media library's path would not show any text at all.
- Accessing the media library's category screen could at times trigger an unnecessary reload of the category's content.
- Open the equalizer without ever opening the playlist editor could trigger a weird state where the equalizer always initially show up docked under the main window.
- Using the backspace key after using the media library's movie jukebox mode's file view now returns to jukebox movie view instead of thumbnail view.
- Adding media entries to the playlist using the media library's function menu did not add the media's title (only the file name/URL).
- The playlist editor's "Add streaming URL" button did not use the newer open URL dialog.
- Opening the fullscreen chapter/bookmark navigation interface did not pause playback when the setting to do so was enabled.
- Ejecting a drive/device while playing a stream would cause the stream playback to stop.
- When the media library is opened and the previously opened folder no longer exists, the media library will try to go up the folder tree to the first parent folder that exists.
- Fixed an issue when OSD messages would not appear if the "Use Exclusive Fullscreen with VMR9 Renderless mode (use with care)" setting was enabled in some cases. This same bug caused screen-refresh issues with some of the fullscreen navigation pages under some conditions.

* New Zoom Player settings Export/Import feature that saves all of Zoom Player's settings, profiles and configuration files to a single ZIP archive and can later on restore Zoom Player's settings from within Zoom Player itself (making it compatible with the Windows Store version of Zoom Player). Both settings are accessible through Zoom Player's advanced options dialog by pressing the "Help / Export" button. The following settings are supported by the export feature:
- Activation Key file.
- Options dialog settings.
- Smart Play profiles.
- Skin color tinting profiles.
- Equalizer presets.
- Media library categories.
- Play history cache.
- Playback scheduler schedule.
- Streaming station manager entries.
- Custom right-click context menu script file.
- Custom Media/DVD background images.
- Custom Media/DVD keyboard mapping files.
* The smart play source filter configuration dialog now allows you to specify a partial URL instead (or in combination) with file extensions, allowing you to setup custom filters based on the site's URL. This allows using such filters as the "3DYD YouTube Source" to stream youtube content directly (https://ys.3dyd.com/).
* Two new category types have been introduced "TV Shows" and "Movies". Zoom Player tries to automatically assign previous categories to these new types based on the 'scrape content mode' previously assigned to the category.
* The media library filter icons that appear under the category list are now accessible using the keyboard by pressing the up or down arrow keys on the first/last category entry. Once activated, you can use the left/right arrow keys to switch between the filtering modes.
* The playlist editor and the playlist fullscreen navigation interface now show the current play position next to the actively playing track.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation /Customization) to switch the category layout between list and thumbnail view modes.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Thumb View) that controls how the thumbnail memory cache encodes the images. The default value is to store as JPEG images which uses the least amount of RAM. But for higher performance, especially on lower end CPUs, switching to RAW 24bit or 32bit will improve performance.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings) to control whether the Media Library's fullscreen navigation 'Media Scanner' is displayed.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings)to control whether the Media Library's fullscreen navigation 'Remove category folder(s)' is displayed.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Playlist) to prevent Zoom Player from trying to parse ".PLS" files and instead lets directshow choose a filter to parse the files. This improves SHOUTcast streaming reliability. If you use .PLS files as SHOUTcast stations outside the station manager, you will need to enable this setting.
* New "/MediaFilter:[Number]" command line parameter to set the media library's filter mode. Valid values are:
- 0 = ALL
- 1 = Movies
- 2 = TV Shows
- 3 = Videos
- 4 = Audio
- 5 = Pictures
- 6 = Executables
* The media library's filter mode is now saved/restored when re-opening Zoom Player.
* With the "Continue to the next Playlist item when an invalid file is played (otherwise show error)" setting enabled, you can now press the Stop button to stop from continuing to the next Playlist item.
* The station manager has been enhanced with an integrated search box.
* New "fnPlayingToClipboard" function that copies the currently playing media file/URL to the clipboard.
* Zoom Player should start between 10%-300% faster, especially if there are many items in the play history.
* Optimized the default fullscreen navigation skin to require less resize operations improving load/open time and taking up to 20% less RAM.
* Optimized the file name hashing algorithm which should improve performance in several areas.
* When fullscreen navigation 'Safe Mode' is enabled, the media library's 'Media Scanner' and 'Remove category folder(s)' are no longer displayed.
* Disabling the "Show media content specific to the media library's category type" setting now shows all media files in a category (previously it would show the content based on the category filter).
* The selected entry on the station manager is now restored when re-opening the interface.
* The station manager now lets you specify a "SHOUTcast" station type. Any station set as SHOUTcast are now opened as SHOUTcast streams even if the "Assume audio streaming (SHOUTcast, ICEcast) if no file ext. is specified in the URL (link)" setting is disabled.
* SHOUTcast stations added from station browser or the fullscreen navigation station list are now automatically marked as SHOUTcast.
* The Station Browser dialog entries no longer resets each time the dialog is closed and reopened.
* The Add station dialog (station manager) remembers the last station mode (TV/Radio/SHOUTcast) used.
* The default media library folder scraping blacklist has been cleaned up.
* The "Assume audio streaming (SHOUTcast, ICEcast) if no file ext. is specified in the URL (link)" advanced options setting is now disabled by default and reset to default on initial run. This setting may be removed entirely in future versions as it conflicts with streaming video and is no longer necessary when playing shoutcast streams through the station manager or fullscreen navigation interface.
* The playing track on the fullscreen playlist navigation interface has changed from green to blue.
* Removing every entry from the "Scrapers folder name blacklist" or "Scrapers file name blacklist" would crash and freeze Zoom Player.
- Resizing the media library window could trigger a crash or show an improperly-sized thumbnail.
- Fixed several memory leaks.
- Fixed a freeze when trying to open the media library before the scraping DLL finished initializing.
- Fixed several cases of "List index out of bounds" errors when trying to use the media library with no thumbnail selected.
- Switching media library filter mode would reset several values changed since opening the media library (e.g. sorting).
- Opening a new media file while the media information dialog was visible did not update to the new media's date and file size.
- Fixed a small memory leak when re-scraping modified media library folders.
- The mouse scroll wheel did not work within the media information window while in fullscreen mode.
- The integrated keyboard-mapping editor did not show the correct key-value for multimedia keys (play/stop/etc), which prevented assigning new functions to multimedia keys.
- Using the station manager's "Play (Add to Playlist)" button would not actually start playing the new station.
- In Windows 10 with the "Blank non-Playing Monitors while in Fullscreen / Zoom mode" enabled and Zoom Player set to start in fullscreen mode, Zoom Player appeared as a blank black box.
- The timeline thumbnail preview appeared in the wrong position on some multi-monitor setups.
- The windows task bar icon was not correctly updated with the specified task list after restarting Zoom Player.
- Fixed a crash when trying to close Zoom Player while Zoom Player was in the process of opening a media file or URL.
- Fixed a crash when trying to play over a 1000 non-existant files or non-responding URLs.
- Trying to switch stations through the station manager while the previous station did not complete loading could have triggered unforeseen issues.
- Trying to close Zoom Player while a track was loading could have caused instability in certain cases.
- When using the media library category filter and then loading a media file that's currently in a filtered-out category, Zoom Player will now switch the category filter to match the playing file and then show the file highlighted when opening the media library.
- If you enabled the video resolution display on the timeline, it should now display even when playing live streams.
- Error messages should no longer appear partially offscreen if the message's content is wider than the resolution of the screen.
- The play history no longer lists duplicate entries for URL streams.
- Zoom Player failed to identify "https://" and "rtmp://" URLs with no duration as live streams, which could trigger a freeze when trying to seek.
- Panning a Zoomed video with the mouse would trigger the mouse's click-event (by default play/pause) after letting go of the mouse button.
- The station manager dialog was showing character tags instead of the actual characters (e.g. "&" instead of "&").
- The station manager wasn't updating the station list display after editing a station.
- With "Show OSD filename when opening a new file" enabled, failing to play would show a blank OSD message.
- The error dialog wouldn't show "&" characters correctly.