Zoom Player's Smart Play

On the "Settings & Black List" there are a few settings worth mentioning in-depth, The "Indirect Connection" setting allows DirectShow to insert filters it assumes would enable a connection between two filters if a Direct connection doesn't work. This should probably never be the case so you should leave the setting disabled.

The "Show Smart Play graph creation errors" setting is useful when debugging. It provides information messages when connections fail. Connection failure is not always fatal as two Sub-Types may be valid for different media content and both will be tried before a complete connection failure is declared.


Source Filters
DirectShow by default automatically presents Zoom Player with the correct Source Filter for a given media file. But certain file types can't be detected automatically or the detection may be incorrect. For these cases, you can define the filter that should be used according to the file extension. The editing interface is pretty simple. Press on the "Add Extension" button and type in the extension you want associated with the File Source filter. You can have multiple extensions associated with the same file source. Then press on the "Browse" button and simply pick the filter from the list.

Certain file formats have a Source Filter which is also a splitter filter (Windows Media for example), for these formats you should check the "This filter is also a Splitter Filter" checkbox so that Zoom Player will not attempt to connect the source filter to a splitter filter later on.


Audio/Video Splitters
After a source filter is loaded, Zoom Player tries to connect it to a Splitter filter. Press on the "Advanced" button to open up a list of the Sub Types the filter can accept. You can obtain Sub Types using GraphEdit by manually connecting a graph and checking which Sub Type is in use by the connection between the Source Filter and the Splitter Filter (as demonstrated on the first page of this guide). Next click on the "Browse" button and pick the filter you want associated with the Sub Types.


Audio & Video Decoders
The Audio and Video decoders use the same editing interface, There's only need to describe it once. After the splitter is connected to the Source Filter, it presents one or more output pins containing Audio and Video data, each with its own format-specific Sub Type. Like the splitter filters, the Decoder filters list which Sub Types they can accept (in some cases more than one Sub Type, for example DIVX4 and DIVX5 have a different Sub Type, but use the same decoder filter).

You to add more than one filter to a decoder chain. The first filter listed should always be the Decoder. The next filters can be any number of Transform filters. For example, in any Audio Decoder filter that outputs standard PCM Audio (not AC3 or other exotic audio), you could throw in the "FFDShow RAW Audio" filter and have many Audio Processing functions at your disposal.

Lastly, you can override the standard audio or video renderer on a per-format basis.