Overview

How to skin and display logos in My Films. In most cases this is automatically handled by the plugin. However there are many ways you can customize the display of logos in your skin if you wish.

Logos

My Films fully supports the display of logos for media info as well as logos for categories (genres) or even countries/languages (flags) or any other logo you may wish to use. As of v 6.0.3 Certification logos are also supported as well as using regex operator to use expressions for logos rules.

In most cases, you do not need to do anything - your skin logos will display as long as you provide: 

1. skin controls in your skin XML files 
2. logos with the same names as the logo rules (or modify the rules - see below under Custom Logo rules). 
   For default logo names, see the MyFilms default logos in

   ...\MediaPortal\Thumbs\MyFilms\DefaultLogos

   .

You may store your logos in sub-folders or not, MyFilms will search sub-folders of your skin\media folder for your logos. 

Note: Users may select which logos they wish to display:

• skin logos (default)
• Default skin logos
• My Films default logos 

Users may also select their own custom logo sets, or modify specific logo rules to display the logos they wish.

If a user selects 'skin logos' and your skin does NOT provide logos, then MyFilms will 'fall-back' to the default logos.

Certification logos by country

The problem with certification logos has always been:

1. The same certification may be used by different countries (e.g.12, G, PG, etc)
2. The format of certification values is variable depending on the grabber/site (or plugin/movie catalog) used. It may contain:
   1. country data (in various forms) such as USA R, USA: R, DE 12, FSK 12, Germany 12, UK 18 etc.)
   2. only the certification value (e.g. R, 12, 18, etc.)
   3. additional text (e.g. 'Rated 'xx' for .... or even more for non-English grabbers.

As a result certification logos often do not display for all films in many MP plugins, or display the incorrect logo for the user's country.

Thus, as of v 6.1.0, MyFilms supports certification logos by country.

Note: This feature is backwards compatible. If your skin does not provide certification logos in two digit country sub-folders (e.g. \us, \de etc.) logos will display as in previous versions.

Warning: Only use two digit sub-folders in

media\logos

for certification logos by country. MyFilms will search them only for certification logos! 

Using MyFilms logos rules

To enable this feature in your skin:

1. Create sub-folders in your media\logos folder for each country your skin supports using the two digit ISO country code, e.g.
   

   \media\logos\us

   ,

   media logos\de

   ,

   media\logos\uk

   etc. - note country folder must be a sub-folder of media\logos)
2. Add certification logos to those folders. Logo image file names should match the certification value (e.g. PG-13.png not USA PG-13.png, or 12.png not FSK 12.png) MyFilms certification logos rule attempts to match only the actual certification value. 

Consult

\MediaPortal\thumbs\MyFilms\DefaultLogos

for reference

To test you can try either of the following two options:

1. Select the My Films Logos pack in in Logos Setup
2. Once you have added certification logos by country sub-folders to your skin,
   1. Select 'User logos of currently selected skin'
   2. Enter a valid country code that matches the certification logos country sub-folder you created (e.g. us, de, etc)

Notes: 

1. If your skin supports country logos (sub-folders) but no country is selected in Logos Setup, MyFilms will default to the current MP Language. BUT In some cases the language code will not match the country code. If so, no certification logos will display unless you select a valid country code in Logos Setup that matches a certification logos sub-folder your skin provides. 
2. If you do not store certification logos in

   media\logos

   they will not display using the MyFilms logos rules. Of course you may use a separate image control like other plugins (see below)
3. You may select the 'default' logo of your choice for the certification logo rule, or add a

   default.png

   to your certification logos folder. The default logo will display whenever there is no exact match of the certification value,  However, this also applies to cases where user has not selected a valid country code that matches your skin certification logos sub-folders..
4. If you prefer to display certification logos in a separate position from other logos (i.e not combined with media info logos) you may edit the certification logos rule to use id 2003 rather than id 2001 and then add another skin control to your skin using

   <texture>#myfilms.logos_id2003</texture>

   . Don't forget to include your custom logos rule with your skin install!

Not using MyFilms logos rules

If you prefer to use a separate image control (not #myfilms.logos_id2001):

1. Edit the MyFilmsLogos.xml to remove the certification logo rule (first one). See Custom Logos rules below for details.
2. Use the new skin property 

   #myfilms.db.certification.logo.value

   in your texture, e.g. 

   <texture>$certification logos path%\#myfilms.config.country\#myfilms.db.certification.logo.value.png</texture>

The new skin property will 'clean up' values in the certification field to remove country and other text and find only the actual certification value. This should provide much better results.

Warning: Using this method will disable user's option to use MyFilms Default logos pack.

Skin XML Logos controls

  Tip If you use logos ID 2012 to combine media info and category logos, make sure you leave enough space in your skin xml. MyFilms caches the logos as image files and will shrink to fit the dimensions of your logos image control.   Alternatively, consider displaying the media info and genre logos separately since the number of genre logos can vary per film but there are usually the same number of media info logos for each film.

There are four different logos controls you may use in your skin to group and display logos however you wish: 

• #myfilms.logos_id2001 - media info and certification logos
• #myfilms.logos_id2002 - category/genre logos
• #myfilms.logos_id2003 - not used by default, but can be used for any other logos you wish
• #myfilms.logos_id2012 - combines logos 2001/2002

You may choose to display only one control or display them separately in your skin., however the default

MyFilmsLogos.xml

Note: If you do not have category/genre logos in your skin, and you include control ID 2002 or 2012 in your skin files, the default MyFilms genres logos will display. 

Custom Logo rules

You may choose to display logos differently, or use different logos rules, or different logos 'groups'. however then you must provide your own logos rules in*:*

• ...\MediaPortal\skins\[skinname]\MyFilmsLogos.xml

You may either:

1. Edit the default

   ...\MediaPortal\MyFilmsLogos.xml

    logos rules using the Logos Editor, and then copy it to your skin folder
2. Copy the default logos rules to your skin folder and edit it manually using any editor, like Notepad++

Note: If you have several logos with the same name in different sub-folders, then be sure to specify the relative path to select the exact logo you wish to display.

What's Next

If you have managed to figure out all the options for logos display, then you are done!

Related

• Skinning My Films