Legend :

"*"  = New
"+"  = Change
"-"  = Fix


--- What's new in Zoom Player v19 beta 6:
 

New :

  * 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 GPU or CPU.

  * Added Equalizer and Pre-Amp support for the libVLC media engine, please
    note that the values work a bit differently when compared to the
    DirectShow Equalizer values.

  * Preferred Audio Device switching (Shift+"A") now works with libVLC.
    You can define you preferred devices in the advanced options dialog's
    libVLC section.

  * 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:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

  * 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:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

  * 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).

  * New "Configure" button next to the Video Renderer selection drop-down
    list (Adv. Options / Playback / Video).

  * 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:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr3FmIi8crI

  * Selecting a URL based IPTV playlist or EPG entry in the options dialog,
    now displays the full text in a hover-hint.


Change :

  + Using Zoom Player to browse the web (for example, using the "/browse"
    command line parameter) now uses Microsoft's Chromium based WebView2
    browser engine and only falls back to the old Chakra engine is WebView2
    is not installed (available on the install center, comes preinstalled
    in Windows 11).
    You can see me code this feature here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU


Fixes :

  - The Play History editor and fullscreen navigation interface can now re-play
    files with a path longer than 255 characters.

  - The playlist entries in the IPTV stream list drop-down would get duplicated
    after updated playlists were downloaded in the background.

  - Pressing Alt+S to bring up the subtitle component's configuration dialog
    did not show the correct window title in some cases.

  - Pressing Shift+"B" to disable the subtitles caused the subtitles to remain
    enabled when reloading the media, even if the setting to restore the
    previous subtitle track was enabled in the advanced options dialog.
    You can see me fix this code here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2QS5gd4VU

  - Fixed a really weird stability issue with the IPTV window that could have
    caused a freeze when trying to close the window and stream logos to never
    appear.

  - Detaching the control bar, moving it to another monitor and then hovering
    with the mouse pointer over the timeline area would show the current
    position indicator window on the wrong monitor.

  - With the "Show all filters in Stream Selection sub-menu" setting enabled,
    the right-click's "Stream Selection" section would show a small cosmetic
    glitch (an empty section).

  - Setting the YouTube Channel media library plugin's "channel list strategy"
    to "Use 'upload' playlist" did not list the videos returned by YouTube in
    the correct air date order and the air date was not displayed at all.




--- What's new in Zoom Player v19 beta 5:
 

New :

  * 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:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSjr8ExbZmM

  * 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:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSjr8ExbZmM

  * 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 label for the skin selection dialog to make it clearer that you can
    scale the skin resolution by a factor of 100% - 800%.


Fixes :

  - Zoom Player's "Export Settings" function did not include 4 setting files:
    1. Media Favorites (files and URLs).
    2. Media Library TAGs.
    3. Media Library Collections.
    4. IPTV Favorites.

  - Fixed a bug introduced in v19 beta 3 that prevented the mouse wheel from
    scrolling through the timeline.




--- What's new in Zoom Player v19 beta 4:
 

New :

  * 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 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhQoJ0kkoA
    Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GLUuymiz_Y

  * 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:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3eDBtunqZc

  * New "1510" Zoom Player API message that is triggered when using
    next/previous chapter. Returns the chapter's position in seconds


Fixes :

  - Fixed a bug that caused the background image to show for a split-
    second when dragging & dropping a media file on top of the player
    window.



--- What's new in Zoom Player v19 beta 3:
 

New :

  * 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.

  * MPC-VR can now be selected as a Video Renderer for media playback. It is
    not fully supported (subtitles, pixel-shaders and other unique features
    for the video renderer will not work presently.

  * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Control) that allows you to rollback
    the current play position when resuming playback from the Pause state. This
    feature is useful if you have an external receiver that requires a few
    seconds to restore the audio when playback resumes.


Change :

  + If you previously used as Custom Video Renderer for media playback, you must
    re-select the custom option (Adv. Options / Playback / Video).

  + Using the Next/Previous Track features now ensures the newly loaded track
    is visible in the playlist editor.

  + Cleaned up some dialogs that had elements that were too close together,
    especially under Windows 11.


Fixes :

  - Scraping TheMusicDB should work once again.

  - When Zoom Player's DSP filter is unable to connect to the audio renderer,
    the DSP filter is now removed so Smart Play will not fail (fallback to
    Microsoft's method of choosing components can be unstable), increasing
    overall stability for badly authored media files.

  - Fixed a bug that caused the media library background image to be overlaid
    twice with a slight offset, slowing down opening a folder in the media
    library a little bit and causing visual ghosting effects (was really hard
    to see with the default background image).
	



--- What's new in Zoom Player v19 beta 2:
 

New :

  * Running Zoom Player on a fresh install will now asks if you would
    like to enable "Performance Mode".
    
    Choosing "Yes" does two things:

    1. Enables D3D11 hardware accelerated video decoding in LAV Filters,
       a requirement for smooth 4K video playback.

    2. 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 / Video

  * A new "Help" section has been added to the right-click menu. The new
    help section can quickly bring up the keyboard shortcut list or quick
    usage guides for many of Zoom Player's popular interfaces.

  * 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 "/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 where
                0 : Closed
                1 : Stopped
                2 : Paused
                3 : Playing

    MediaName - 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,Position


Change :

  + The keyboard shortcuts list (F1 keyboard shortcut) is now a single
    dialog which opens much faster and is no longer a part of the options
    dialog which takes longer to open.

  + The "Toggle Control Bar" right-click menu option has been re-located
    to the menu's root level.

  + If the playing media has only one audio track, it will no longer
    be listed in the Stream Selection section of the right-click menu.

  + If MadVR is selected as the Video Renderer without being installed,
    Zoom Player now notifies you and falls back to the EVR renderer.


Fixes :

  - A bug caused some information dialogs to show the information in
    the window's title and the actual title in the windows body.

  - Fixed several libVLC related bugs, if you're still seeing issues,
    please let me know on Zoom Player's Community:
    https://reddit.com/r/zoomplayer
	


--- What's new in Zoom Player v19 beta 1:
 

New :

  * Zoom Player has integrated libVLC, the media engine used by the
    VLC media player. This integrating 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 customizable
    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, allowing me to develop unique features that are
    impossible to do with libVLC. At the same time and due to it's
    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 Arrows + 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.
    
    - 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).
    
    - Color Controls:
    Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue color controls are available.
        
    - Audio Framework Device Selection:
    libVLC is pretty flexible in it's 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).

    - 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.
    
    - Screenshot:
    The screenshot keyboard macro (Alt+"F") is fully compatible with libVLC
    with the exception that the screenshot file format is limited to ".png".

    + And since this is just a beta, there's more to come!

  * New "Pause closes unseekable live stream (otherwise ignored)" setting
    that controls if Zoom Player closes a live stream when pausing or
    if the pause is ignored.
    
    Previously the hard-coded default was to close the stream, the new
    (configurable) default is to ignore the pause command.

  * New button on the IPTV interface to quickly open the IPTV settings
    page in the advanced options dialog.


Change :

  + To support chapters (bookmarks) using the VLC Media Engine, I had to
    rewrite nearly all of Zoom Player's code related to managing chapters.
    Please let me know if something broke. As a bonus, you can now use
    emojis and other special Unicode characters in the chapter names.

  + Media chapters with no titles will now show a "no title" title.

  + The IPTV stream list group layout (open/close) is now saved and
    restored even after closing Zoom Player.

  + The Custom Action button's hint when hovering with the mouse now lists
    the assigned function and not just a general "Custom Action".

  + Cleaned up a few of the advanced options dialog pages.


Fixes :

  - Trying to switch to the next audio track no longer tries to set
    an audio track if there is only one track present (caused muted
    audio for a second or two).

  - Failing to play an IPTV stream will no longer highlight that
    stream as the active stream.

  - You should no longer be able to erase embedded chapter entries
    (it didn't really do anything).

  - Fixed all sorts of goofs that were possible through the chapter editor.