Announcing Zoom Player MAX & IPTV version 21.2
Published May 5th, 2025
What's new in this release:
* When customizing the control overlay (Adv. Options / Interface /
Control Overlay), all changes are now updated in real time to
reflect your preferences.
Check out this video to see how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypufL7tUczo
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) that allows you
to set the maximum width (relative to your screen) for the control
overlay's user interface while in fullscreen mode.
This feature is very useful when using a mouse to control Zoom Player with
a large display where you don't want to move the mouse long distances.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) that limits
showing the control overlay on mouse movement only if the mouse is hovering
over the top / bottom overlay controls (disabled by default).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) that
automatically hides the control overlay if the mouse cursor moves
into the video area and no longer hovers over the top / bottom overlay
controls (disabled by default).
* New settings (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to colorize
the Control Overlay buttons and bar knobs. Colorizing the bar knobs is
optional when colorizing the buttons.
* New settings (Adv. Options / Interface) that allow you to customize the
hint pop-ups that appear when hovering over the timeline and in the
color control overlay interface.
* When using the IPTV dialog to play a VOD TV series, the next episodes
are automatically queued to the playlist, allowing you to switch to
the next episode without re-opening the IPTV dialog.
* New setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that when enabled, closing
a group snaps the group to the center, displaying an even number of items
above / below the closed group (enabled by default).
* New "Copy URL" entry adding to the IPTV Window stream list's right-click
context menu (when clicking a stream).
* The OSD Pop-up actions have a new default style that overrides any
style set by the current skin with a new modern style with transparent
background. Of course you can customize the new style with custom
fonts, background opacity and colors.
If you prefer the classic style, you can disable the modern style
under "Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display / Actions".
* The playlist editor now uses a Modern UI style.
* The setting that controls the OSD Pop-up actions (Play, Pause, volume,
etc) size change while in fullscreen mode (Adv. Interface / On Screen
Display / Actions) has been replaced with a new "OSD window size" setting.
The new OSD window size setting automatically adjusts relative to the
display device's DPI setting, letting you pick a size that is maintained
on high resolution screens with a DPI value greater than 100%.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) that allows
you to align the fixed buttons zone to the left instead of the default
screen-centered layout.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) that allows
you to hide the timeline (useful if you're only watching live events).
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to control
whether the control overlay auto-hides when the mouse cursor is
hovering over the timeline area.
* New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to control
whether the control overlay auto-hides when the mouse cursor is
hovering over anywhere in the overlay (top and bottom areas).
* Using the next/previous track feature after playing a live IPTV stream
plays the previously/next streamed channel from the IPTV stream history.
* The IPTV Group Manager is now able to add an entire group as a favorite
group, simply select the group and click the left-arrow button.
* The IPTV Group Manager is now able select and hide multiple groups,
simply click the eye button, pick the group and click the check button.
* New "Reset user interface size to default" feature assigned by default to
the Ctrl+"`" keyboard shortcut. Using this feature resets the user interface
to it's default size, taking skin magnification and system-level DPI into
account.
* Added two more size settings to the Control Overlay's timeline bar.
* New next/previous DVD bookmark features that can be added as buttons
to the Modern UI's control overlay.
* Added "Fullscreen (maintain zoom) on/off" button options to the control
overlay's settings page (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay).
+ You can now click anywhere in the video area to drag the playback window
a few pixels when the left click action is set to play/pause. The play /
pause action still works as intended if the mouse cursor isn't moved too
far between clicking the button and letting go (16 pixels by default).
+ The Zoom Player playlist format has been enhanced to remember the
media engine used when opening the media. So closing and re-opening
Zoom Player or just re-opening the same file from the playlist
should preserve the previously used media engine instead of reverting
automatically to DirectShow.
+ The options dialog has been redesigned to make it wider, giving
translators more room to effectively translate Zoom Player's settings
to other languages.
+ The "Playlist Editor" entry on the right-click menu has been moved
from the "Open Interface" sub-menu to the second option from the
top on menu's root level.
+ For clarity, I renamed the "Zoom on/off" double-click/middle-click mouse
actions to "Fullscreen (maintain zoom) on/off"
+ Now that the control overlay has become the default interface, I moved the
"Show time seek position hint over Timeline", "Show position preview
thumbnail" and "Only if media reports key frames" settings from
"Adv. Options / Interface / Control Bar / Timeline" to
"Adv. Options / Interface" as these settings apply to both the control bar
and the control overlay.
+ The timeline position hints are now styled in the same style as the color
control overlay hints and are fully customizable under "Adv. Options /
Interface".
+ To make it more accessible, I've added the "Group Manager" to more places
in the IPTV's stream list right-click context menu.
+ The keyboard layout editor now always opens centered on the options
dialog and covering 80% of it's size. I also cleaned up the editor
dialog a bit when used with high DPI displays.
+ If skin magnification is at 100%, the default window size now takes into
account the monitor's DPI value on initial run (if you have the setting
to restore the UI position and size disabled).
+ The control overlay buttons now show a pop-up hint describing the button's
function when hovering over a button for approximately 2 seconds. This
feature can be disabled under "Adv. Options / Interface - Show Button
Hints".
+ The Pop-up action messages' (e.g. play/pause/volume) OSD Message Pixel
Offset setting (Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display / Actions)
is now DPI adjusted, meaning that it maintains the same relative distance
based on your display's DPI value.
+ Removed the "keyboard shortcuts" section from the options dialog.
It has been replaced several versions ago by the "F1" keyboard
shortcut.
+ Removed the "Link Parser" section from the options dialog, it's a
feature I once planned but was never implemented.
+ I changed how the option dialog's tree-view panel is translated to
make it easier for me to edit and to make it more future proof as
previously any change broke the translation.
For you it means that if you are currently using an older language
file, the tree-view will appear in English. Updating to the latest
language files as they become available on the install center should
fix this issue.
+ The modern UI default button layout has changed to replace next/previous
track with next/previous chapters (which fallbacks to next/previous
track if no chapters are available).
+ The next/previous chapter feature no longer performs a next/previous
DVD bookmark action. Instead performing a next/previous track action.
The next/previous DVD bookmark features have been split into separate
features.
+ The Ctrl+Shift+"F10" switch user interface to Classic mode and
Ctrl+Shift+"F11" switch user interface to Modern mode keyboard
shortcuts now reset the Media and DVD skins to default.
+ You can now use a double-click action in the options dialog's
control overlay section to quickly add/remove buttons from the
different zones (System, Pre-Title, Fixed and Dynamic).
- When using non-DirectShow zooming or panning functions in fullscreen mode,
the control overlay buttons stopped working.
- There was a hard limit to the number of IPTV groups you could hide and
unfortunately that limit was around 180-240 groups and going over would
reset the hidden groups.
I have upped the limit, allowing you to hide anywhere between 10000 -
15000 groups, which should hopefully cover even the most Xtream playlist.
- Trying to play a video with an external audio track failed if the original
video file or streaming media had no audio track itself.
- Fixed an issue where the next chapter feature did not always work.
- The options dialog's search feature did not work for some sections
(media server, control overlay, possibly others).
- Fixed a case when using the MPC-VR video renderer where the mouse cursor
would sometimes stick as a resize cursor even after moving it from the
window's edge.
- The minimum window size is now automatically adjusted based on the
monitor's resolution in order to prevent overlapping user interface
elements on a high DPI display.
- Under certain conditions, the resume playback dialog did not work,
simply doing nothing when you pressed enter.
- The mouse wheel can now be used to scroll over the control overlay's
timeline to seek in the same way that was possible when using the
Classic interface's timeline.
- If you have had the setting to show the control overlay when seeking,
performing consecutive seek actions did not reset the auto hide timer
causing the control overlay to sometimes hide sooner than expected.
- Setting the control overlay's timeline/volume bar's corner radius
to "None / Square" caused the specified bar colors not to be used.
- Fixed a very hard to trigger crash when trying to close Zoom Player
using the control API just as Zoom Player was starting to run.
- Using the next frame or previous frame feature did not work as
expected while the fast forward or rewind features were active.
- The title text on the IPTV VOD TV listing was slightly cropped on
the right side.
- Fixed a few cosmetic issues when redesigning the options dialog.
- Fixed a bug when using the next/previous track repeatedly by holding the
"]" or "[" keyboard shortcuts with only one media entry in the playlist,
triggering a "next media in folder" action that caused a duplicate media
entry to be added to the playlist and the "next media in folder" function
to not work anymore (since now there are two entries in the playlist).
- Adding a media to the favorite list that did not contain a title caused
the favorite list to display an empty line. Now the media's name or URL
is displayed.
- Opening the options dialog with a media currently playing could would
trigger a case where only the control overlay's timeline was visible.
- The "Double-click triggers both double and single click actions" setting
did not function as intended (single click action not triggered twice
even if this setting was enabled), possibly broken by a previous update.
- Fixed a crash when opening the color control overlay, closing it with
the hint visible and then re-opening the color control overlay and
hovering over the icons to show the hint.
- The options dialog's section title area was not translated correctly
when initially opening the options dialog.
- If the color control overlay interface was open, clicking the video with
the mouse cursor did not work.
- Under some condition the seek forward/backward a specified number of
seconds control overlay icons did not properly show the seconds count.