Overview

How to choose aMPed options to get the results you wish.

Goal

With so many options available, how do you know which aMPed options to choose to create the style you like best? This tutorial will help walk you through the process.

Basic Home Layout - revaMPed or Vintage?

In MediaPortal you can choose to use either the standard My Home window, or Basic Home. To learn the difference, see Home or Basic Home?

If you decide to use Basic Home, aMPed offers three default layouts which you can use to create your own mods:

1. revaMPed (menu style with sub menus)
2. Vintage (button style - formerly known as 'Classic')
3. Touch (new as of version 3.4) - combines the main layout of revaMPed, with the sub menu layout of Vintage

You can customize any of the default layouts. See Basic Home Editor for details.

Backdrops

aMPed allows you to configure your backdrops in many ways:

1. Default backdrops which display when no fanart is available
2. Home screen backdrops
3. Backdrops/Layout style - Fanart, Wide Fanart (as of version 3.4 also supported for 4x3 screens), No Fanart

If you like fanart and backdrops, the default (Fanart) settings should work for you in either 4x3 of 16x9 screen size.

To customize your display, read on. See also aMPed Config for more details.

No Fanart/Backdrops

If you don't like fanart/backdrops, then you can disable all or some as follows:

1. Default Backdrops
   1. Go to the Backdrops tab in aMPed Config
   2. Select *Default Backdrops = None -* no aMPed backdrops will display in any windows.
2. Plugin Fanart
   1. Disable it In the plugins that support it such as Fanart Handler, TV Series, Moving Pictures, My Films, etc
3. Layout Style
   1. Go to the Layouts tab in aMPed Config
   2. Select List Layouts = No Fanart - fanart will still display when you access aMPed's Details View or Menus, unless you select Default Backdrops =- None on the Backdrops tab, and disable fanart in plugins that support it.
4. myHome and myPlugin screens:
   1. Go to the Backdrops tab in aMPed Config
   2. Click the 'myHome' or 'myPlugins' button
   3. Select a single image of your choice, which could even be a plain background (such as the aMPed background.png in the skin\amped\media folder)
5. Basic Home (revaMPed or Vintage)
   1. Use the Basic Home Editor and select a plain single image backdrop for the Home Backdrop

No Fanart Sample

The most common setup for No Fanart Backdrops, is to simply choose No Fanart for List Layouts with Big Covers.

You can still view fanart/backdrops when you access the hidden menu or Details View.

Note: In The Fanart Handler plugin configuration, you can select if you wish to display fanart in Music or Video windows or not, and if you wish to display artist images when fanart is not available.

Thumbs Backdrops

You can also choose to display auto generated thumbs as backdrops in Pictures, Videos Shares (Thumbs layout), Video Playlists (including TV Series), and Recorded TV.  If fanart is enabled and available it will always take precedence over Thumb images.

Note: As of version 3.3, Picture thumbs now use the new Fanart Handler feature, so you get higher quality images and they do not display the horrible Windows generated thumbs for folders. However, there is still no way to make portrait sized images look great as backdrops.

Layout Options

In addition to the backdrop options, which affect all layouts, you may also customize:

List Layouts

For Lists you can select several layout options:

1. List width - from 250-530 - see tool tip for recommended widths for different screen sizes and layout options
2. Big Icon lists - offer wide lists in windows that support that layout (e.g. Music, Recorded TV)
3. Big Covers - ideal when choosing No Fanart Backdrops

Big Covers

aMPed's default cover size is designed to display as much of your fanart/backdrops as possible. Big covers were designed to be used with No Fanart Layout Style.  However, as of version 3.3 you can choose to display Big Covers with any Layout style, either with or without fanart backdrops.

1. In aMPedConfig, go to the Layout tab and check the box for Big Covers.

Big covers zoom smaller when you are in Details View to display the text as well as fanart:

Wide Lists

aMPed is designed to display simple clean lists. However, if you find you have a lot of long file names or titles scrolling in lists, you may prefer to display wider lists. 

Big Icon List Layout

As of version 3.3 the Big Icon List layout has been redesigned so you can display wide lists on screens that support it (Music, Recorded TV, Youtube.fm etc) without needing to customize list widths in all windows.  Just select Big Icons List from the Layout Menu Option.

Selecting  Wide List Widths 

1. In aMPedConfig, go to the Layout tab and enter the width you wish for lists.  The value will affect most lists, however in a few windows list widths are preset due to the plugin capabilities or design. Note the tool tip for recommended widths for different screen sizes and layout styles.
2. On 16x9 screens, wide lists do not work well with the default Fanart layout style . However, you can choose to display wide lists using:
   1. No fanart
   2. Wide Fanart

Wide Fanart (on16x9) looks like this in Lists                            And Like this in Details View:

 Icons, Filmstrip and Coverflow

There are no settings to customize for Icons, FIlmstrip and Coverflow.

TV Guide - 8 or 10 line

If you use 18 pt font on 4x3 you will likely prefer the 8 line guide. Otherwise most users prefer the 10 line guide to view more data:

Video Shares Layouts

If you use Shares view in Videos to display movies, then you will usually prefer the 'Covers' Layout.  However, aMPed provides a unique  Thumbs layout for Video Shares view that displays auto generated thumbs for your non movie videos - i.e. all the videos that do not have movie covers or posters.

What's Next

To find out more details on how to select aMPed options, see the specific Tutorials listed on the Tutorials tab on the main aMPed Wiki page.

Related

• aMPed Config