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I have a bit of an esoteric problem here- please bear with me.
I added Diablo 3 and SC2 to my Steam library so I could have in-game messaging and chat while playing them. Since they are not official Steam games, they do not have the nice little randomized backgrounds that appear behind each game when you choose them in your library using detail view. For some reason, I really like this little decoration, and it annoys me that my 3rd party Steam games don't have them.
I learned that if you take in-game screenshots, however, Steam uses those shots as the backgrounds to your games, and that this works with 3rd party titles.
So as I play through D3 and SC2 I took a bunch of screenshots to serve as background material for those games.
The problem is, I don't like the UI elements cluttering up the background pictures (doesn't seem like any of the "official" titles have this, or at least they don't look nearly as ugly), so I took most of the screenshots during cutscenes, etc. where there was no UI to "dirty it up". Unfortunately during cutscenes there are additional black bars that appear on the top and bottom of the screen as some kind of cinematic effect, which shows up in the screenshots. The result is that when those shots are selected to display in the background, you see a black bar running across the top too.
At first I tried to just take those jpgs, and edit out the black bars. That was easy, but it did not seem to reflect in the steam library. The pictures still showed up with the black bars, even though the source jpgs no longer had them.
Then I learned that there is a "screenshot.vdf" file in the steam folder directory where the screenshots are stored. This is some kind of database file that seems to record where the screenshot files are and what game they go to, since if you erase it you lose all record of your screenshots existing in Steam (even though the jpg files are still there).
This .vdf file is just text, so I went in and saw that the images I had modified were still being specified as 1920x1080 (there are entries that specify height and width for each screenshot). Simple enough, I went through and changed the modified screenshots to reflect their new height of 900 pixels. Problem is, when I rebooted Steam to test, the images that were modified seemed to break and when those images were selected as the background pic the window was blank. But when an unaltered image was chosen as the background, it showed up fine.
I read some more and learned that Steam may not like images with non-standard aspect ratios, and this seemed like the problem I was seeing. Easy enough, I'll just tell Steam that these cutscene images are 1600x900, which is a standard aspect ratio. Well I did that but again when I rebooted steam to test, the images are showing up with black bars again (but they are showing up, and not just defaulting to a blank background)!
Does anyone know if it is possible to accomplish what I am looking for, which is to be able to edit out the black bars in my screenshots so the background images in the Steam library don't have them? I don't care about being able to upload them to the Steam cloud, I just want the pics to show up in the background of the steam window when I choose those games.
Ruahrc
Edit: Well the next thing I tried worked, which was just to go in and crop the shots down to exclude the black bars, but keep the 16:9 aspect ratio. I lose a little width on either side of each shot but because of the way Steam fades out the left and right of each picture anyway, I don't think it makes any real difference as far as what I would see in the window. Now I have a cool pictorial representation of Diablo 3's storyline cycling through my Steam window when I choose that game from my list
. Anyway I guess I'll leave this up and hope it helps someone else.
I added Diablo 3 and SC2 to my Steam library so I could have in-game messaging and chat while playing them. Since they are not official Steam games, they do not have the nice little randomized backgrounds that appear behind each game when you choose them in your library using detail view. For some reason, I really like this little decoration, and it annoys me that my 3rd party Steam games don't have them.
I learned that if you take in-game screenshots, however, Steam uses those shots as the backgrounds to your games, and that this works with 3rd party titles.
So as I play through D3 and SC2 I took a bunch of screenshots to serve as background material for those games.
The problem is, I don't like the UI elements cluttering up the background pictures (doesn't seem like any of the "official" titles have this, or at least they don't look nearly as ugly), so I took most of the screenshots during cutscenes, etc. where there was no UI to "dirty it up". Unfortunately during cutscenes there are additional black bars that appear on the top and bottom of the screen as some kind of cinematic effect, which shows up in the screenshots. The result is that when those shots are selected to display in the background, you see a black bar running across the top too.
At first I tried to just take those jpgs, and edit out the black bars. That was easy, but it did not seem to reflect in the steam library. The pictures still showed up with the black bars, even though the source jpgs no longer had them.
Then I learned that there is a "screenshot.vdf" file in the steam folder directory where the screenshots are stored. This is some kind of database file that seems to record where the screenshot files are and what game they go to, since if you erase it you lose all record of your screenshots existing in Steam (even though the jpg files are still there).
This .vdf file is just text, so I went in and saw that the images I had modified were still being specified as 1920x1080 (there are entries that specify height and width for each screenshot). Simple enough, I went through and changed the modified screenshots to reflect their new height of 900 pixels. Problem is, when I rebooted Steam to test, the images that were modified seemed to break and when those images were selected as the background pic the window was blank. But when an unaltered image was chosen as the background, it showed up fine.
I read some more and learned that Steam may not like images with non-standard aspect ratios, and this seemed like the problem I was seeing. Easy enough, I'll just tell Steam that these cutscene images are 1600x900, which is a standard aspect ratio. Well I did that but again when I rebooted steam to test, the images are showing up with black bars again (but they are showing up, and not just defaulting to a blank background)!
Does anyone know if it is possible to accomplish what I am looking for, which is to be able to edit out the black bars in my screenshots so the background images in the Steam library don't have them? I don't care about being able to upload them to the Steam cloud, I just want the pics to show up in the background of the steam window when I choose those games.
Ruahrc
Edit: Well the next thing I tried worked, which was just to go in and crop the shots down to exclude the black bars, but keep the 16:9 aspect ratio. I lose a little width on either side of each shot but because of the way Steam fades out the left and right of each picture anyway, I don't think it makes any real difference as far as what I would see in the window. Now I have a cool pictorial representation of Diablo 3's storyline cycling through my Steam window when I choose that game from my list
. Anyway I guess I'll leave this up and hope it helps someone else.
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