kay... that gives me a fair idea on the process itself (as i do have the multimedia components loaded in properly, too). Guess i'm gonna have to test this out a bit further with the required modded pngs to see if those could 'replace' the absent biks by choice or by moving them away.

(PS, btw -- There is also a strange naming schema of the default trading movies in my install folder; the pending numbers (of the DL races) needed to be edited manually with Happy_Neutral_Angry (from the 01-02..that were there) suffixes in order for the game to properly detect and use them (as they are called up from the currently valid raceconfig lines). Is this a known issue which would need to be fixed also? Cuz, on every further automatic updates by SDC, it looks like those would simply be re-written all over again... which is about 125mbs worth of useless verifications until the upgrade process is validated for "true" files!)

Thank you for your swift and efficient work, also.

Ummm...ok not really sure if this answers your question or not because I'm not sure that I understand what you're asking about, but here goes:

When you're editing a race in the Custom Race Wnd, by default it strips the path and extension from the filename of the race portrait that you selected to get the base name.

So if you have a custom race that uses the race portrait C:\My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\Gfx\Portraits\FroodyRace.png

It strips everything but the FroodyRace and uses that to generate the rest of the values:

FroodyRace_Trade.png (for the default trade portrait in the abscense of bik files)
FroodyRace_neutral.bik (used by the trade wnd if the race is neutral towards you)
FroodyRace_angry.bik (used by the tradewnd if the race is angry at you)
FroodyRace_happy.bik (used by the tradewnd if the race likes you)
FroodyRace_Small.bik (used by the United PlanetsWnd)

If you're editing the file manually, you don't need to use the exact same name, but you do need the suffixes and you should still specify that they are .bik files, just for compatibility.  They should also follow the rule that if it can't find the bink file, that it will look for a png file with the same name.  If there is no path specified in the file, it will insert the directory Gfx\ at the begining of the filename.  This means that the specified file can be located in the Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Twilight\Gfx directory, the My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\Gfx directory, or the Mods\Gfx directory.  If all else fails, the game should use the Race Portrait by default, but on the Trade screen and the alien message dialog it will be stretched and look odd.

If all you're replacing are the movies, you could create .customracexml files for all the races by selecting them as your race or editing them from the opponent screen, then edit the customracexml files.  This shouldn't trigger the cheater flag for the metaverse if all you're doing is changing the portrait and movie fields.  Then you can just distribute those along with the graphic files to put in the My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\Gfx folder and it can be used without having to enable mods.  However, if you're also editing any of the data fields, you'll want to just replace the RaceConfig.xml file and put the graphic files in the Mods\Gfx folder. 

Your right Cari besides i not that interested in Star Wars anymore and i should be glad to have any custom races at all.

Gosh, cari... this is all soooo complex - i will have to re-re-read the whole explanation to fully grasp the 'process' of detecting biks or pngs from any particular folders. No offense but, it's just how my stiffy brain works -- at times!
I've already tried the Mod/gfx route and it seems my pngs (for NAH trading movies) weren't detected within a game. One important thing though, all & each of my races datasets are pulled off individual Custom#12s and selected as opponents during setup phase. Thus, they had to simply reside (call it a much easier way to have full access to anything at once while i design my stuff!) in the MyDocuments_schema. Which may prevent the code from assuming a default link to different specific images rather than unavailable biks. What i could notice though is that the regular main default/trade pic sticks in as a replacer for any of the three variations continually.
Lots of testing yet to do based on your good advice(s) above, though.

As for the imbroglio which i was trying to explain about the default installed files from DA, it is simply a matter of "proper_genuine" file names or not as they are (or will be) automatically upgraded via SDC. Since (ex), Terrans movies are listed in the race config file like this; [DefaultTradeMovie]RaceImage00_neutral.bik[/DefaultTradeMovie].. for one.
and, the Movies folder has a file named;
[RaceImage00_trade00.bik] for it.

I needed to edit their names for the game to use all.
Which isn't necessary for DA (Krynn, etc) since those DO have been named and defined to match up already.

Tks again.