How To Save Your Steam Games And Saved Games Due To Hard Drive Failure, Reinstalling, Or Purchasing A New Computer

Steam is a great utility for the distribution of games. It gives the control the developers and distributors of games want, and it allows the End User (Gamer) to organize and access their purchased game library wherever they may be, whether they travel, log on to different systems, reinstall their operating system, or purchase a new computer without Steam at all. Just a few clicks and you are either playing your games, or after a bit of downloading, will be playing them soon.

One of the many benefits of using Steam to play your games is that you can easily restore access to your game library, even if you reinstall your Operating System (Windows, etc) or purchase a new hard drive (the filing cabinet inside your computer that keeps all your information) or purchase an entirely new computer. Either way, Steam keeps track of the games that you own the rights to play and allows you to play them in short time in any of those situations.

One of my favourite capabilites of Steam is that, since the games are kept within Steam's own directory system (it's own folders and subfolders) even though I recently reinstalled Windows, I can still be up and playing my games in a matter of minutes. I can even have my old Save Games so I can pick up where I left off, all it takes are a couple of steps.

For example, if you know that you'll be reinstalling Windows soon (perhaps a hard drive is giving signs of trouble and might fail soon, so you will have to buy a new one) or purchasing an entirely new system, all it takes to save Steam and all your downloaded and installed games and saves is these steps:

• (Optional Step) Copy your Saved Games to a location to be retrieved later.

This will allow you to continue the longer games without starting over (unless you want to start over for fun, of course). Game saves are kept under the MyDocuments folder in Windows, usually in the MyGames subfolder, or a subfolder created by the game itself. Copy these files wherever you wish, to put them back in the same places later, after you are done reinstalling Windows, for example.
It is also a good idea to keep a backup copy of these somewhere anytime, so that you do not have to always start at the beginning of a game after reinstalling it.

Some games create a subfolder within the game directory (usually named after the game). If you do not see a Save Game folder in MyDocuments or MyGames for the game you choose, it may be in the games installation location (eg. c:\program files\game name\saves).

• Copy the Steam folder to a location to be retrieved later.

The Steam folder is usually in the Program Files directory. Simply copy this file somewhere to put it back later, or relocate it wherever you have some spare room.

**You can also install Steam to a different location (than the default Windows/Main drive for example), then if you have to reinstall Windows for some reason (virus, hard drive failure, etc) you can use Steam from wherever you installed it.

• Run the Steam.exe file within the Steam folder.

Whether you originally installed Steam in the default location (c:\program files\steam) or somewhere else, simply navigate to the Steam folder and run the Steam executable. Valve has made it easy to get Steam up and running again by allowing it to simply detect your current Operating System situation and download and install any files that it needs to get itself working.

Valve has also put in a nice little layer of security when starting Steam 'for the first time again' like this, by sending you a special code to your Steam Registered Email Account. It will ask you to log in to your email and then enter this code into the Steam window and then your game library is now unlocked and you can play all of your games in the new setup you have.

• Verify the Games Library, in case you missed and if you deleted any games or game files.

If you deleted any games to save some space, or the copying of the Steam folder failed for some reason, make sure your games are fully installed and ready to play by right-clicking on any game in your game library and choosing Properties.

In here, click on the Local Files tab and then click on the Verify Integrity Of The Game Cache button. This will tell Steam to check to make sure all game files needed to run the game are present and accounted for.

If not, it will automatically download what is required to run the game. When you start it up, it may also install DirectX or other system files if needed.

Hopefully all will go well and you should just see this:

That's it!

  

Summary: You can copy the Steam folder anywhere or install Steam anywhere you wish, and after 'redoing' your system (eg. reinstalling the OS or hard drive) simply go to the Steam folder (after putting it back or from where it is now if you like it there) and run the Steam.exe file.

 Have fun playing your Steam games!




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How To Save Your KVM Switch From Automatically Switching When Using Virtual Machines

I ran into this problem with VMware Player, but I'm sure other people have run into it, with other virtualization applications, or this one. What happens is, when you put your mouse into/out of the virtual machine, it 'kicks' your KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch (esp. if it is USB) out to the other computer/connection! Annoying! This post is how to stop that from happening.


What is going on is, the virtualmachine is registering the mouse ('capturing' it) and the numlock state may change (as though you hit the button), and when you move the mouse outside of the VM again, it is releasing the mouse and the numlock state may change (as though you hit the button again) and these two 'numlock hits' together can trigger your KVM switch (especially if it is USB).

One solution is to disable the Numlock option to toggle the KVM connections (if you can). Another option (and if you can't disable anything) is to make sure that the Numlock state matches for both the host system and the virtual machine guest system.

To do this, hit numlock (ignore the triggering your KVM switch if it goes off) until it stays in the state you want it to be (either off or on) outside of the VM. Then, inside the guest VM, hit numlock to match the state that you set it outside of the VM (in the host, either off or on).

That's it!

Now, when you move your mouse in an out of the VM, the Numlock state will be the same for each and it won't toggle your KVM switch.


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How To Save Any Video Into A Format For Use In Sony Vegas

Although I have tried many Video Editing programs, I always come back to Sony's Vegas video editing application. I own Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 at the time of this post and have tried and worked with older versions including Pro, in the past. I always enjoy the flexibility of the Non-Linear Editing and the options that the program provides for all levels of users, despite it's learning curve. It is a powerful program and due to it's method of operation, it is made to handle certain types of formats better than others. This results in faster and easier processing and editing. It also results some slight strictness in formats that it can import (be read/input into Vegas).

One of the problems many people have with this program is when it comes to importing certain types of video. In Sony's Vegas video editing applications, clicking on such a problem file will not result in the program giving a preview or reading the file's attributes properly (the size and codecs within the video/audio file), it results in just the name of the file as it is, just below the built-in Explorer window pane. This post is how to take any format of video, from any source, and make it usable or available for import into Sony Vegas (Movie Studio/Pro) for editing.

There are many people that think they know what they are talking about, saying things like, "you can't use this-or-that format" or "that format is a distribution format" or "you can't import that into vegas" and other elitist and snobbish comments. These people are not being very helpful however and don't explain the issue fully - most likely because they do not understand it properly and only know how to do the one thing that they use Vegas for and have no experience with anything else.

There are formats that are indeed not listed in the Official Technical Specifications at the Sony Website for Sony Vegas. Here is the list that is given for Sony Vegas Pro 10:

Opens: AA3, AAF, AIF, ASF, AU, AVI, BMP, BWF, CDA, DIG, DLX, DPX, DV, EXR, FLAC, GIF, HDP, IVC, JPG, M2T, M2TS, MOV, Sony MXF, MP3, MP4, M4A, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, OGG, OMA, PCA, PNG, PSD, QT, R3D, SFA, SND, SWF*, TIFF, TGA, VOX, W64, WAV, WDP, WMA, WMV

While many of the formats people ask about, such as FLV (Flash Video, from YouTube for example) are not listed, there are actually many "distribution formats" (compressors that are used in the final step before giving out a video to others to make it smaller) that people say 'will not work' in there, such as WMV (Windows Media Video, from Windows Movie Maker). Clearly, they can be used/imported into Vegas. There are many ways to do this, many outside the scope of this post, but I will explain some video concepts and why there are additional formats that can be imported into Vegas which are not listed.

Firstly, one issue that seems to confuse many people is the concept of Containers versus Codecs. 
 I will explain it here:

- A container, when talking about digital video, is merely a 'holder' of a video (and can hold audio and other things as well) inside a file. That file can have multiple file name endings (suffixes, such as FLV or WMV)
- A codec is a compressor/decompressor (the processing code) of a specific video format (type of file) that can be held within any container

What these mean, is that a container
(for example AVI (Audio Video Interleave) usually used in the Windows Operating System) 
can have many types of codecs
(for example AVI can hold inside it XviD, DivX, Mpeg-4 (MP4) and more)
inside of it. 

The file name ending (suffixes such as .wmv, .flv, .ogm) usually describes the type of file format (the codec used) inside the container. For instance, a file ending in ".wmv" (a Windows Media Video container) will usually have video inside that has been processed with the Windows Media Video codec inside. 

It does get more complicated somewhat, where you can rename certain containers into others (such as renaming DVD Video .VOB files into .MPG, as both containers can hold the MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Experts Group Part 2) codec inside, but it is actually more complicated than that, as each codec and container has it's own standards and programming limitations that it must adhere to inside to remain properly readable. Also, most codecs are processing the video differently with a different set of rules and operations, so you cannot just go around renaming all containers into other random container names.

If we ignore the container names (the file name endings of .asf, .flv, etc) and just talk about the codecs (the compression used) inside the file, it's easy to always remember that one codec can always be changed into another codec. That is, any format can be converted into another format.
For example, a WMV format video can be imported into a program (that can read WMV) and can be exported as an MPEG2 format (if MPEG2 is what is desired and the program can output it as a file type, format and container).
This allows us to do things such as take an FLV file and convert it so that we can put it on a DVD that can be read in a dvd standalone player or game console that can read dvds. This is video conversion.
All types and formats can be converted into other formats (as long as the program we are using can read the initial input format, the Source Video (or Audio).

This leads us into how we can take any video and import it into Sony Vegas. Although there are additional ways to do it, the easiest way to get any video into Vegas for fast and responsive editing, is to convert it.

The most usable format for Vegas (any edition) is Uncompressed Video (video that is not compressed). This means that the video (and audio if desired) is processed very little in any way that attempts to make it smaller and therefore give away some of the quality in exchange for a reduced file size.

Using Uncompressed, the video will look almost exactly the same as the source quality/sharpness/color, but the file size will be much much larger. A 20GB container of Uncompressed Video will only hold minutes worth of video and audio, for example. Uncompressed is the easiest way to go however, as most video utilities and conversion programs can output video as Uncompressed, with no need for any other software (or codecs) to be installed on your system (other than to read/open/import the source video itself). Uncompressed is usually only viable for small clips however, unless you have the harddrive space to devote to decompressing your videos fully (literally, taking the compression attempts to make it smaller out of it) into Uncompressed formats.

Another compression format, a 'light compression' or 'mildly compressed' format, is MJPEG. Used frequently in digital cameras, MJPEG at it's highest setting ('Quality 100 percent' or 'Quantizer 1') also has high quality output and is easily imported into all of Sony's Vegas products. Although it is not listed officially in the specifications, it is an older format that is handled almost natively by all applications available today, including Vegas, without any special conversion (other than converting your source video file into MJPEG). It is a fast, responsive, high quality format that easily imports into Vegas and has much smaller file sizes than straight Uncompressed. A 1GB container of MJPEG video will hold a couple minutes of video, but when compared to the 10-20-plus gigabytes required by Uncompressed for the same amount of time of the same video, it is clearly a more usable format for compiling a collection of videos on your system, prior to importing them into Vegas to work with. If you have not used MJPEG before, I highly suggest trying it out.
(MJPEG is available in the free FFDSHOW compilation of video and audio codecs and codec packs using the FFDSHOW codec translation)

Another format that Sony's Vegas line works well with is the Blu-Ray Disc Audio Visual (BDAV) container format (usually ending in .MTS or .M2TS) which can contain the codecs MPEG-4, H.264 AVC, MPEG-2 and more inside of it. Rendering to MPEG4, you may find that Vegas defaults to a standardized high bitrate .M2TS output file. With the high-quality Advanced Video Coding capability, you can have very high settings within an .m2ts file that is capable of being imported into Vegas for editing.

Some of the free utilities that can be used in Windows to convert video for easy import into Vegas are:

• Xmedia Recode
• Virtualdub
• Avidemux
• WinFF
• and many more

Using these free utilities (or any other program that you prefer), converting your source video into Uncompressed is the most reliable way to import any video for use in the Sony Vegas line of video editors. After that, other 'only slightly compressed video' formats such as Huffyuv and MJPEG are recommended.

I have found that Avidemux and even the trusty Virtualdub sometimes run into 'problem videos' that will not open (or be read incorrectly, such as being 'seen' as 320x240 when they are not). A solution for these is the previously mentioned Xmedia Recode. I have not yet run into any video that this wonderful freeware program cannot open and save in a format desired, such as the above-mentioned MJPEG, Huffyuv, MPEG-4 AVC and more (don't worry, the author is German but it is available in English from the author's website). I am not affiliated in any way or degree with the author or this application, I am merely a fan of it, choosing it over and above, after trying many others (such as Virtualdub, Mediacoder, Super, Xvid4Psp, Avidemux, Winavi, TMpeg programs and more over the past couple decades).

Remember, you can use other formats in Vegas, even formats that are not listed in the official specifications (such as DivX or XviD), but these formats are more highly compressed (more processing has been done on them, trading off some quality for a far smaller file size) and with larger Groups Of Pictures (GOP's, frames that are compressed in a way that only the changes between each are kept track of, so that each frame is dependent on the frames in front or behind it). These formats require more background processing as Vegas decompresses them on-the-fly in the various tracks in your project to show you the compressed frames as you work with them. This slows down the responsiveness of Vegas and makes your overall work flow slower (although it does work, do not listen to self-proclaimed 'experts' on forums that claim that it does not work). I have done it and seen it done many times in the past, usually due to time constraints - it merely causes extra processing time and some slowdown in your work flow (it may also require additional steps such as installing additional codecs or frameserving, but these topics are for another article). If this slowdown in work flow is undesired, then Uncompressed or MJPEG, Huffyuv and other 'lossless' or 'mild compression' formats is the way to go for Vegas, giving you the ability to use/edit any video that you may have while maintaining quality and responsiveness.

That's it!

  
 Addendum:  There seems to be an attitude going around forums everywhere, that Codec Packs (compilations/collections of various helpful codecs, so that your system can handle a multitude of video formats without any problems) are to be avoided. This attitude and stigma usually comes from persons who have no idea what they are talking about, or only know how to do the one thing they know how to do in Vegas (or use Vegas and have no experience with any other applications or video formats). There is nothing wrong with Codec Packs and I personally have used them for decades without problems (some unhelpful snobs who state that it will 'wreck your Windows' simply know nothing and have no experience in these matters). Using many different video formats (especially when dealing with foreign hardware or video) sometimes necessitates the usefulness of a Codec Pack, which allows the handling of many different video formats not natively handled by Windows and common applications. Many Codec Packs will also have additional capabilities other than just translation of differing video formats, offering features such as multiple subtitle handling, frameserving into video editing applications ('translating the video on the fly' so that a video editor can use the video 'as is') and more. They are nothing to be afraid of (unhelpful and unknowledgeable people will say to avoid anything new and useful at first) and greatly assist in opening the many different formats of video that you may encounter. Feel free to use Codec Packs such as K-lite Codec Packs, The Combined Community Codec Pack and others without fear.  


If you liked this post, buy me a cup of coffee :) (You can even use your credit card to donate a dollar with PayPal and it does not give out your information to the person you are sending it to). Thanks and check back in once in a while to see more tutorials on How To Save Things!

How To Save Certain Videos To Open Properly With Avidemux

Avidemux is a wonderful free open-cource program which has simple editing and offers many different filters for processing video (similar to Virtualdub for those that have used that). One problem that has arisen in the program however is that importing a few formats (such as FLV (Flash Video) files) results in what seems like only the upper left corner of the video being opened, and Avidemux 'sees' the video as being only 320x240. This post is how to change your video you want to work with to make it 'be seen' properly by Avidemux.

In our example for this post, we have an .FLV video file - which is just the type of container - that has an AVC H.264 format video inside of the container, with a resolution of 856x480 with a display ratio of 16:9 (perhaps a home video from YouTube or a family member). It is a widescreen video. When importing it into Avidemux however, it brings up only what seems like the upper left portion of that video and it looks square in the preview in Avidemux. 

This does not happen with all FLV containers or all formats of video, this is just an example, but for those whom this applies to, what is happening is that Avidemux is not getting the proper information from the video file to open it correctly.


To fix this takes only two steps using completely free programs:

1. You can demux (demultiplex, separate) the video and audio with a little utility called "FLV Extract" 
2. After that, simply re-mux (re-multiplex, put together) the video and audio in a utility called "YAMB"

To do this, just drag the video on to the first program, which opens up a little window to mouse-drag your file onto.

Then in YAMB, click ADD, and select the audio and video from the original clip (the files that flvextract makes, ending in .264 and .aac, which are the video and audio parts). Hit MUX and it will join them together in a new .MP4 file.

This file can then be read "properly".

That's it! Now those problem videos can be opened with these applications. Enjoy.

If I may suggest another great freeware program to open those 'trouble' video clips, I like to use Xmedia Recode. A list of the multitude of formats that the utility can handle, from the author's website, is here. As you can see, it is able to convert almost anything you will encounter into almost anything else, spectacular for a freeware program. Kudos to the author (although he is German, don't worry the program is available in English). I have used Xmedia Recode to open many .FLV and other files that Avidemux seems to have trouble with. I hope this help you a lot in working with your problem videos.

 Addendum:  Note that some video clips will sometimes result in having their video and audio 'out of sync' with each other (the audio seems to happen too early or late for the video occurences on screen, such as a gun shot appearing and then hearing the bang a second later) using the FLVextract/YAMB steps above. This is being investigated by many people and hopefully a fix for some of these problem videos comes soon. Until then, for these special problem videos, changing the frame rate can help with this problem. Whether in an editor or with another utility (such as AVI Frame Rate Changer), changing the frame rate slightly can help to put the video and audio back into syncronization. A tutorial post on this to come in the future! 
(Also, other video editing and conversion applications (such as Virtualdub and especially Xmedia Recode can open those videos without problem, so that they can be processed as desired, or at least converted into a format that your desired applications can import comfortably (such as de-compressing the video into an uncompressed or lightly compressed format, as in this article at this website) - when all else fails, try something else!) Good luck with it and I hope this has at least helped.

 

If you liked this post, buy me a cup of coffee :) (You can even use your credit card to donate a dollar with PayPal and it does not give out your information to the person you are sending it to). Thanks and check back in once in a while to see more tutorials on How To Save Things!

How To Save Images On GoogleSites Without A Border

This is how to remove the border around images on Googlesites that you upload. By default they all have a border around them on your pages, but if you want the image to blend seamlessly into the background (if your image has transparent edges or the borders match your webpage color, etc) then this is what to do:

• While editing a page, simply hit the HTML button at the top to see the HyperText Markup Language (source code) for the page.
• Then find the picture you want to have no border (it will have the filename of the picture you uploaded somewhere near where it picture is posted on your page, for instance, if the picture is at the top of the page, look for something that looks like the filename of the picture near the top of the HTML code that is shown).
• Once you find the filename of the picture you uploaded (it will have an IMG (image tag) code), copy and paste the line below just before the ending bracket ">" that comes after the starting IMG bracket "" but after everything else inside that IMG area that talks about your picture:
  style="border-width: 0px; background-color: transparent;"

That's it! Now your pictures should not have a border around them. Enjoy.

If you liked this post, buy me a cup of coffee :) (You can even use your credit card to donate a dollar with PayPal and it does not give out your information to the person you are sending it to). Thanks and check back in once in a while to see more tutorials on How To Save Things!

How To Save Background Images from Webpages with Firefox

This is a short tutorial on how to save background images from websites using Firefox. I see this question posted on forums and comments once in a while. Do not use these steps to infringe on any copyrights! Most websites and companies won't mind if you save their image simply for your desktop background, but most don't allow distribution of their material, if it is not open domain/free/etc.

If you do not already have Firefox Web Browser installed on your system, you can get it for free by going to Mozilla.com
Click on the Free Download button and save the file it sends you somewhere you can remember. Then simply run the file by going to where you saved it and double-clicking it.

Using Firefox, it is only two steps:

• Once at a webpage that has a nice background you want, simply Rright-Click off to the side, somewhere on the background picture itself, and a menu will come up:

Left-click (normal click) on "View Background Image". You will then see the full picture that was used as a background image for the webpage.

• Save the image. It can now be used for your desktop background, for example.

That's it!

If you liked this post, buy me a cup of coffee :) (You can even use your credit card to donate a dollar with PayPal and it does not give out your information to the person you are sending it to). Thanks and check back in once in a while to see more tutorials on How To Save Things!

How To Save Videos from YouTube and Similar Websites

     This is a short tutorial on how to save videos from YouTube and similar websites. I see this question posted on forums and over and over on YouTube itself. Do not use these steps to infringe on any copyrights! It is best used when you have permission from a friend or company to download their videos so that you can simply watch them later.

     Here are a couple ways you can save YouTube and similar website videos for later viewing, such as watching them at breaks at work, while travelling, and so on. The ways described in this post involve using a web browser  to view web pages and content (possibly different than the one you are using now) and using small add-ons (small programs that run within the web browser) to save the videos as files on your computer. These are not the only ways to save the videos, but are commonly used and easy ways to do so.

• Install Firefox by going to Mozilla.com
  Click on the Free Download button and save the file it sends you somewhere you can remember. Then simply run the file by going to where you saved it and double-clicking it.
  Firefox is a web browser (allowing you to view web pages and items on them) that is customizable and allows us to run Add-Ons
• Get Add-On(s) for Firefox that allow saving of the videos from YouTube and similar sites by clicking on the word Tools in the toolbar at the top of Firefox and going down to Add-Ons. You can also go to the main Firefox Add-on website to search for Add-ons. Either way, enter in the search bar (next to the magnifying glass) the word UNPLUG or the words VIDEO DOWNLOAD HELPER.
  These are two add-ons that allow saving of videos from webpages. We offer two because we are not affiliated with any add-on creator and have no preference towards any add-ons. These are merely two which work well and have been used by many people to save videos from webpages.
  You can also just click on these words to go directly to their download pages:
  UnPlug
  Video Download Helper
  Once at their respective Add-On pages, simply click on the green Add To Firefox button with the + symbol on it.
  You may have to click an Allow button that pops up on the top of the webpage. This is simply a step making sure you are allowing this small add-on to be installed and that noone is doing anything automatically on you that you do not want.
  
• Go to YouTube or similar websites and visit the webpage of the video you want to save
  (simply go to watch the video as you normally would do)

• For Unplug, click on the small green fish in the lower right-hand corner, then click on the Download button for the quality of the video you want to save, then use the default Firefox Save dialog to choose where to save it
  

  

  Click to see larger size

  For Video DownloadHelper, there is a red yellow and blue button in the toolbar at the top, or simply right-click and go to DownloadHelper>Media and choose the quality of the video you want to save, then use the default Firefox Save dialog to choose where to save it

Click to see larger size

That's it!

It may seem like a lot at first, but once you install the add-on you wish to use, which only needs to be done once, you can save any videos you want after that without needing to install anything else. If the webpage can play the video, you can save it.

If you liked this post, buy me a cup of coffee :) (You can even use your credit card to donate a dollar with PayPal and it does not give out your information to the person you are sending it to). Thanks and check back in once in a while to see more tutorials on How To Save Things!