Guide Logos

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Marty_S_McFly

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Guide Logos

#1

Post by Marty_S_McFly » Thu Jan 30, 2020 5:15 pm

Was wondering if there is anyway could fix 4 of the Channel logos as they are the old Channel name logos as these channels are renamed and have new logos. CTV SCi-Fi Channel, CTV Life Channel, CTV Comedy Channel, CTV Drama Channel. these channels are on Rogers Cable in Canada. Thanks :)

Sammy2

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#2

Post by Sammy2 » Thu Jan 30, 2020 5:18 pm

Yes. Download new jpg files of the logos you want and drop them into the logos directory in epg123.

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Marty_S_McFly

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#3

Post by Marty_S_McFly » Thu Jan 30, 2020 5:28 pm

Thanks for the help. :)

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#4

Post by Sammy2 » Thu Jan 30, 2020 10:14 pm

Marty_S_McFly wrote: Thu Jan 30, 2020 5:28 pm Thanks for the help. :)
Did you find the directory?

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garyan2

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#5

Post by garyan2 » Fri Jan 31, 2020 12:32 am

Rules for replacing logos.

Image must be PNG.
Filename must be the station Call Sign (i.e. CNN.png).
Best to crop out all transparent pixels to look best in guide.

If you want to see if SD already provides the logo but EPG123 doesn't select it, click the [Collect SD Logos] button in the configuration tool. Once done, all the logos will be located in the .\sdlogos folder. If installed in the default Program Files location, they will be in C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\sdlogos folder.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

Marty_S_McFly

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#6

Post by Marty_S_McFly » Sat Feb 01, 2020 3:28 am

Yes I did and replace the logos with correct ones :D

jwk

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#7

Post by jwk » Sat Feb 01, 2020 5:13 pm

garyan2 wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2020 12:32 am Rules for replacing logos.

Image must be PNG.
Filename must be the station Call Sign (i.e. CNN.png).
Best to crop out all transparent pixels to look best in guide.

If you want to see if SD already provides the logo but EPG123 doesn't select it, click the [Collect SD Logos] button in the configuration tool. Once done, all the logos will be located in the .\sdlogos folder. If installed in the default Program Files location, they will be in C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\sdlogos folder.
What are the options for Logos that have little or no contrast in the program guide... for example:

FiOS:
Pop - black on dark blue (Pop is transparent on black field)
Viceland - black on dark blue (Viceland is black on transparent field)
IFC - black and dark blue (IFC is black outline on transparent field)
COZI (OTA logo used for both OTA & FiOS) - blue on dark blue (COZI is blue on dark blue)
Motortrend - dark grey on dark blue (Motortrend is dark grey on dark blue field)

I could probably edit these in an image editor, wondering if it possible to change the color of the program guide to something like a mid-level grey, or if there's other options besides these)

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garyan2

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#8

Post by garyan2 » Sat Feb 01, 2020 6:31 pm

If you downloaded all the logos provided through Schedules Direct using the [Collect SD Logos] button and didn't find a better one, then you can edit the existing logo (I use Paint.net) or you can look in Logopedia or even wikipedia. Another option is to download MCL XL and see if you like one of theirs, but I would make sure to not "enable" MCL XL for providing the logos.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#9

Post by jwk » Sat Feb 01, 2020 10:25 pm

Thanks Gary

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#10

Post by Space » Sat Feb 01, 2020 10:29 pm

Let me know if you find better logos for those channels, I also have FiOS (although I don't know if that matters) and have the same problem.

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#11

Post by jwk » Mon Feb 03, 2020 10:57 pm

[attachment=0]Logos Edited.zip[/attachment]
Hey Gary,
the downloaded Schedule Direct SD logos didn't have anything that would work for me, so I edited the original logos in Photoshop. (I looked at the Paint.net app you suggested, looked like it would be fine, but when I looked at the dependencies for Win 7 SP1, it mentioned you need to update with Microsoft Platform Update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 x64 - KB2670838, which I was able to locate (even though Microsoft is taking down all the links for everything Win 7), and when I read the KB for it, it said there was a possibility to cause BSOD's mainly if an AMD & Intel video iface exist but other things might cause a BSOD (I do not have AMD), and if it happens to install another update, which took me down another rabbit hole to find, but eventually did. In the end, didn't install either and stuck with Photoshop, even though it's like shooting a rabbit with a tank.

So... changed the name of original logos to (original name) Old.png in the C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\logos\ directory and dropped the edited ones in their place.

I closed the WMC client (don't know if I really needed to do this), and ran a scheduled update from EPG123 at the current time +1 minute and that inserted the new logos in WMC (Gary please weigh in on this and tell me if there's a better way, I still a noob with your program trying to understand how it works).

@Space- I zipped these up and attached to this post. I'm running a 14 line menu, so the text is sort of small and ragged at that resolution, but so is the small text on the other icons... it's legible though, and better than the black hole we had before. Don't forget to rename the COZI icon to the name of your local nbc affiliate's 2nd subchannel (mine is WRCDT2... zipped with 7zip, just about anything should unzip it.
Attachments
Logos Edited.zip
(52.03 KiB) Downloaded 58 times

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#12

Post by Space » Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:21 am

Thanks for the logos! I installed them in the folder, but have to wait for recordings to stop before importing them.

Looks like you got the main ones, but there are still a few that need to be edited. What did you change in the logos?

Some of them need to be completely changed as they are the wrong aspect ratio and look like a small postage stamp, so for them I guess I have to get a whole new one. Perhaps from "My Channel Logos". Will have to look in to that.

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garyan2

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#13

Post by garyan2 » Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:58 am

You don't need to change the time of your scheduled task to see the results. The best way to force an update is to use the configuration GUI and click the [Save & Execute] button.
- Gary
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#14

Post by jwk » Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:42 am

"... have to wait for the recordings to stop before importing..."
Do you really have to wait? I close the WMC interface from time to time, recordings continue, scheduled recordings start and stop without the interface running... or did you mean something else? I wouldn't experiment now myself though on important recordings, if I didn't already know for certain. You might even be able to leave the WMC interface running while you update the epg, I was hoping Gary would weigh in on that...

"...but there are still a few that need to be edited."
Which ones are you referring to? There are a lot that could use some re-tweeking, re-sizing, re-imagining...

"What di you change..."
Not much, really, my immediate goal was just getting something legible on the screen. 4 of the 5 had a transparent background layer and a black script layer, but the layers are flattened into one final layer, so the easiest thing to do in PS was to use the selection tool and 'select' a color (black), which draws the outer boundary around the script; then, use the eyedropper to 'pick' white from the color chart, and the 'fill' tool to fill the inner boundary with white. Then 'save as' a *.png. I could have picked any color to fill with, but I chose white to keep it simple and high-contrast, as picking another color might have resulted in me 'round-tripping' a few times, until I got a good balance of color, saturation, brightness, etc to go with the blue background. I'm no expert with PS, and haven't used it much in the past few years except for a small amount of photo-editing, and editing BluRay disc cover art from images borrowed from websites to use in JRiver for art not in the TMdb database (yet)... but the later is mostly just clipping, resizing, aspect ratio correction, and conversion from various filetypes to .jpg for JRiver.

The Motortrend icon was the least satisfactory to me... the biggest problem is the angle of the text is such that it's made up of irregularly positioned pixels when it's reduced in size... increase it enough in size and the error is reduced to the point where the irregular stairstepping is barely observable... bear in mind I'm using a 14 line menu which makes the text fairly small. At a 10 line menu setting, it might look pretty good.

I did download the logos that Gary suggested. There wasn't much difference or variation of the logos I already have, more of logos that I don't use or need.

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#15

Post by garyan2 » Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:51 am

EPG123 will, by default, delay an import until there are no recordings in progress. There were reports that an import would cause a recording to stop/abort, so it is just a precaution. I could never duplicate it myself but there were enough reports of it happening that the delay became part of the standard process.

If you use the client to import the mxf file, it will warn you a recording is in progress but will let you proceed if you wish. Also, you can edit the task and add a '-f' switch to the client action to ignore recordings and force the import.
- Gary
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#16

Post by jwk » Tue Feb 04, 2020 3:38 am

I never got any error message, so maybe I started it before the program started recording, and because I closed the client interface, I never saw it, and the recording interrupted ? Wasn't really looking... anyways, I updated the other thread I still get those 3 error messages, but I've watched and recorded on 9.1, almost never use 5.2 & 5.3, but the guide info is there for all 3 and are working.

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#17

Post by Space » Tue Feb 04, 2020 6:08 am

Note that the normal Microsoft guide update (not using EPG123) could also cause recordings to stop sometimes. I believe it only happened if the update actually modified the guide for the show/listing that was recording (even if the modification was minor and did not affect the start/stop times).

I'm not sure if it's ANY change to the listing that caused it to stop, but I did see at least one where the listing was updated and the recording stopped even though the update did not change the start/stop time. I don't recall what was changed in the listing.

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#18

Post by jwk » Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:39 am

I guess I'm lucky Space, it never happened to me. Anyway, not a factor now that EPG123 won't interrupt a recording.

How did the edited icons work out for you?

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#19

Post by jwk » Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:40 am

Duplicate post removed
Last edited by jwk on Wed Feb 05, 2020 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#20

Post by Space » Wed Feb 05, 2020 6:54 am

Yes, the new icons look much better, thanks. But I'd like to get better ones for some other channels as well. I tried to get some from "My Channel Logos" by installing it in a VM, but it looks like I need to have WMC on the same machine configured with a tuner, etc. and I can't get that working. I may try it some time in the future by booting off of my old failing drive because that already has WMC/tuners installed.

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