Zoom Player Standard Review

Zoom Player is a robust Media and DVD Front-End Player. Zoom Player was designed to be simple at first glance while being remarkably dynamic and flexible when used to its full potential.

Zoom Player was designed to be simple at first glance while being remarkably dynamic and flexible when used to its full potential.

Zoom Player works in two modes.

A Media mode which can play any file supported by DirectShow (any file which plays in MediaPlayer) and a DVD mode which uses pre-installed DirectShow DVD filters to play DVD content.

It supersedes media player in all it'sfunctions and provides several important functions that media player lacks. Zoom Player provides special zooming functions to improve TV-Output quality by eliminating overscan.


Some features:

- New Enchancement to the Skinning code, allowing you to specify a negative group value to make sections of the skin only activate if the specified skin group is disabled.

- The "fnPLItemUp" and "fnPLItemDown" functions which allow you to move items up and down within the Play List have now been assigned keyboard macros of "Alt+PgUp" and "Alt+PgDn". These functions have also been extended to update the Play List Navigator, so that you can now re-order items within the Play List using a remote.

- The Play List Navigator has been enhanced to accept the Navigational Insert key to toggle selection of the currently highlighted play list entry. This ties into the above functions to allow you to re-order multiple items at once. The color used for file selection is selectable under "Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators".

- New Button on the Station Editor allowing you to play a new station by appending the station to the play list instead of clearing the play list.

What’s Better About Zoom?

Right from the start, I noticed why Zoom had such a following. It actually TELLS YOU what might not work properly on your system. I was in awe. This was the first time that any player has told me from the start that I could potentially have problems playing certain filetypes.

My amazement continued since it even offered where I can grab the codecs! I had nearly forgotten all about my Windows Media Player until a little window popped up at the bottom right of my screen saying that I could now upgrade to the next version… thanks but no thanks.

As for the player itself, they’ve kept it simple to use. All the necessary buttons are there, including an extension to playlist and equalizer. A big help to any user is that it’s rooted with shortcuts. You’re even given the options to change some around.

In the options menu, there’s a direct link to Zoom Player’s site where they give you detailed instructions on how to better configure your system for the ever growing numbers of Media and compression types. Zoom Player definitely shows its users the platinum card when it comes to help. They’re truly in it for the users, something which is rarely seen these days in the software industry let alone in other media players.

I was looking at some of the options when I noticed that these options were for the intermediate users, so I wanted to see what a power user’s options menu looked like. After I hit the advanced options tab, I was… slightly overwhelmed to say the least. Power users, eat your heart out! Because you’re about to take a step inside the candy store.

Values, OSD and color controls, aspect ratios, playback features and resolution manipulation is right at your fingertips. Now the tough part is to actually figure out what everything does.

For people who want to personalize their players to look pretty, Zoom allows you to do just that. It supports a number of different type of skins suitable for any user.

What I didn’t like about Zoom Player Standard was that I had to buy the Professional version to use some of its more practical options. Next time I'll get the trial version of Zoom Player Pro, so I can get more options (even if it's for a limited time). You can’t switch to DVD mode unless you purchase their product on Standard and some of the options were made unavailable.

I felt as though there was a lot more I could have done with Zoom Player, since its support for power users is so high. It definitely handles a lot while giving the users a lot of features. I guess I just need to use it more.

The Good

It tells you what you’ve got, what you’re missing and where to get it. It supports many codecs and is completely based around the user’s needs.

The Bad

You have to pay for the really good stuff.

The Truth

For what Zoom Player Standard offers with their free version, it’s still worth the download. Get every codec you’ve ever wanted and play it all on Zoom Player Standard. Even if you don’t use Zoom Player, it’s a great tool to have since it tells you which codecs you need and even gives you the option of downloading them. The user’s needs come first and it has great support. I’d definitely recommend this as a download. But if you want to see what Zoom Player is truly made of, try out their Pro version.

Download zoom player trial version here

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Mp3DirectCut Review

mp3DirectCut is a frame-based editor for MPEG audio (Layers 2 and 3) with many useful features, easy to install and just as easy to use. It handles cue sheets, so that you can split a file at cue positions, also allowing you to directly record and encode an MP3 from your audio input device. The installing procedure of this software needs only two clicks and you can begin using it.

When it is used for the first time, mp3DirectCut brings up the configuration tab so that you may customize language, navigation in the edited file, mouse actions, encoder settings, output and input devices and even the colors of the work area and tools. This specific feature comes in handy when you need to clearly distinguish between the cues, cursor, level graph and so on. You can change all these settings whenever you want from within the main window of the program.

When you’ve finished configuring mp3DirectCut’s settings, you can put it at work and here is where you’ll see just how useful the program really is. A nice treat is that mp3DirectCut allows the use of both mouse and keyboard even independently, that is you won’t need to use both at the same time if don’t want to. This application is designed to handle large files and, as a consequence, there are many ways to reach a position. Use just the mouse, or just the keyboard. Neat, isn’t it? And another plus is that if you hover the mouse over any button on the interface you will see what it does and what is the specific key assigned for accessing that function. Simple and easy to use even for those with less experience working with this kind of software.

After you load the desired file, mp3DirectCut shows you all the information you need: total time, length of selection (after you perform one), decibel level (while playing the audio file) etc. If you run the application maximized, all the info is very easy to read as the big timer is really BIG, but if you run it in window mode, you’d better give up the big timer because it doesn’t reduce its dimensions and this may be somewhat annoying. Other than that, in a few clicks you can select the portion you want to be left out and simply cut it away. Or, the Crop function will allow you to do the opposite: select a section of the file and cut everything before and after it, so that it will be "the sole survivor".

mp3DirectCut has many options specific for this kind of software, but some of them are not to be found in all programs, especially the free ones. Tag ID3 and file info, Pause detection, Gain, Create fade and Normalize options will allow you to add specific information, raise or lower the level of the audio file so that there are no abrupt peaks or sections barely audible.

There is one feature of mp3DirectCut that really caught my attention – High Speed Recording. What it does is to let you grab the old 33-rpm LP records with 45-rpm. Get digital on those vinyl records of yours! However, you will witness some distortions even if you encode at 44.1 kHz, the minimal recommended setting for this job. If the resampling distortions are not a problem, then you have found a good friend in mp3DirectCut.

All in all, mp3DirectCut does very well the job it was meant to do and even has some extra features that prove to be quite useful, so it isn’t a sole purpose application. There are other programs that offer roughly the same options and some are also free, the features found in mp3DirectCut give it that little extra advantage needed to aim at one of the top spots in its category.

The Good

Easy navigation, even in the case of really large audio files, large set of options that can easily be customized, plenty of keyboard shortcuts that make it usable even without the mouse.

The Bad

The visualization of the audio file could be improved. The main graph contains higher frequencies only and it can also be too high or too low over the whole MP3.

The Truth

mp3DirectCut is made for editing MP3 files fast and with no loss of audio quality and it does that very well. Easy to install, customizable and with some handy extra features, mp3DirectCut will meet most needs and requirements regarding the work with audio files, so you can at least try it. Did I mention it’s free?

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