[INFO] New boot image and open/close animations with instructions for install

[starkrav]

I wanted to give something back to the forum for all the help I’ve received so I decided to “integrate” a boot logo with a new animated splash open/close that I made. To take full advantage of the splash animation, you will need to modify your boot logo image as well. I know for many of us the instructions to do that are quite technical so I’ve written them as plainly as I can below for non-programming users (like me!)

First of all, what am I talking about? If you do the following modification to your A1200, when you power it on, you’ll see a new image, the boot image below. As the phone continues to power up, the image will seamlessly begin to animate until finally your phone is fully powered up. When you power off the phone, the same animation will start but in reverse, stopping once again at the original boot image below:


Boot image

Last image of animation

So here’s how you do this:

Procedure for modifying boot logo image:


You will need ekonsole installed. If you don’t have this program already installed, you can get it here.


What is it? As described in the stickies, it is a command prompt window for Linux, with menus that allow you to issue commands directly to the operating system. It looks like this when loaded:












The ekonsole program is a .pkg file and after being uncompressed (you will need the program 7-zip or something similar to unrar or unzip the file. You can get 7-zip here) you will also have to install it, so you will need either MPKG or Superman or Smart Assistant. Those programs and how they are installed are described in great detail in the “Guide to Modding your A1200” found here. You need at least one of these programs for many other applications so if you haven’t already, install one of them now. I prefer Smart Assistant because it is more powerful, but I have all 3 installed on my Ming.




You will also need mtdtools. This is a directory containing several commands that you can issue to Linux, using the ekonsole window. The commands that are included are very powerful so when using them you have to follow instructions EXACTLY. You can get mtdtools here. When you uncompress this file, you will get a directory named mtdtools. That directory has to be copied to your SD memory card, to the root directory, and to make it easier to issue commands, rename it to mtd using Windows Explorer. The procedures for doing that are also in the “Guide to Modding your A1200”, above.




When you uncompress this file, you will get a directory named mtdtools. That directory has to be copied to your SD memory card, to the root directory, and to make it easier to issue commands, rename it to mtd using Windows Explorer. The procedures for doing that are also in the “Guide to Modding your A1200”, above.

Last of all, you will need the new boot image (this is a .GIF format image, low resolution). You can find it here:




This image also needs to be copied to your SD memory card, to the root directory. OK, now, after disconnecting from your PC and rebooting your phone, you are ready to begin.

Start the ekonsole program (by clicking on its icon, the same as any other program). A window will open and you will see the menus and the # prompt. By selecting the menu button in the upper right (see image above), you will get the standard keyboard for the Ming. You can now begin typing these commands, EXACTLY as they are written here, including the spaces, ending each line or command with the return key ←| .

/mmc/mmca1/mtd/flash_unlock /dev/mtd11
/mmc/mmca1/mtd/flash_erase /dev/mtd11
dd if=/mmc/mmca1/moto.gif of=/dev/mtd11 bs=512 seek=4 conv=notrunc
/mmc/mmca1/mtd/flash_lock /dev/mtd11 0 -1
reboot

Unfortunately, the / and = and _ keys are on the %#+ screen so you have to keep toggling back and forth between the standard keyboard and the special character keyboard. It’s tedious but it works.

What you are doing is unlocking a section of memory that contains the current boot image (mtd11), erasing that section and then replacing it with the new boot image (moto.gif). Finally you are relocking the section and rebooting the Ming. The commands above that start with /mmc . . are from the mtd directory, so that directory has to be named mtd and it has to be in the root directory of your SD card. The /mmc/mmca1/mtd/ portion of the command is telling Linux where to find the command itself such as flash_unlock. Please note that commands entered into ekonsole are case sensitive, that means each command has to be typed exactly as specified, including whether it is upper or lower case, because otherwise you will get an error message.

The dd if= . . command uses the name of the new boot image so it also has to match exactly. If not, you’ll get an error. So copy the boot image to the root directory of the SD card and name it moto.gif.

After entering the last command “reboot” and hitting the return key, in a few seconds the phone will reboot and you should see the new boot image. One important note: if you decide to install some other boot image with these instructions, the image has to be small enough in byte size to install correctly. The image itself should be 240 x 320 in resolution, but we discovered that if the byte size of the file is too large, the image will get truncated. I personally use Photoshop to save images in web format to reduce the byte size.

OK, now we’re half done. The next step is to install the opening and closing animations. The easiest way to do that is using the program Splash and you can find it here.





Again, instructions for installing this program are described in great detail in the “Guide to Modding your A1200” found here.




You will need the animations themselves and the .phm file that Splash uses to install them. You can find them here.




After unzipping this file, copy the directory (Eye_animation) containing 3 files to your SD memory card. After disconnecting from your PC, you load your File Manager program on your phone, find the eye.phm file, select it with the stylus by pressing down without letting up, and select “Open with” and then choose the Splash program you previously installed. Splash will then install the animations and in the version of Splash I have it actually says out loud “installation complete” when it finishes. At this point you can power off your phone and you will see the new animation. When you power on again you will see the new boot logo that also now animates.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy it.

[MSmiles]

i've been reading multiple threads about this.
dumb, newb question: whats the difference between

bootimage/shutdown image
and
On/off screens

I've been seeing threads about these.
The boot and shutdown images seem to need the phone to be flashed.
While, on/off screens can be changed just by theme-ing the phone.

-----------------------------------------------
::edit::
Also, what's the maximum byte size of the Gif image?

[Konig]

as starkrav said,
on/off screens (splash screens)= the small intro where the stationary image breaks up to turn into the moto logo
bootup image = stationary image
shutdown image = intro playin in reverse to finally reach the stationary image again

so yea...to change the splash screens, u just need to install a theme or install just a phm file
upto now the way to change a bootscreen was to incorporate a custom gif into a firmware and flash with it...
now this method may help bypassing that..ill try tomorrow...big long day ahead

[aashish2137]

hey nice work. ..
as a part of creating a skin, can you help me with how could i make more of such animations on my own ??

[starkrav]

Let's see. First of all, I don't know the limit for the size of the boot image. I know the one that failed and truncated was 56k. So I assume anything larger than that would fail also. But how much smaller it has to be I'm not sure. I had one image of 29k work so somewhere between 29 and 56 has to be a limit.

As for the difference between the boot image and the animations, the boot image is a single GIF image, stored in its own location in the phone's memory. It's the image you see when you first power on the phone and the last image you see when the phone shuts off - it's only 1 file, it's the same image. The animations are also GIF images but, animated GIFs, and there are 2, one that "plays" when the phone is powered on and the other when the phone is turned off. I don't know if there is a limit to the size of these images, I'm sure if the animation is too large (i.e. too many bytes) it will fail to play entirely before the phone completely powers up or off. I've looked a couple of animated GIFs and they were 438k each.

For some reason, probably because the CPU is busy loading everything, the "on" animation plays very slowly, while the "off" animation seems to play without much delay. So it seems feasible to design 2 animations with different timings to minimize the "stuttering".

As for designing a new theme, not having done that I'm not sure what to tell you except that the splash animation portion of each theme consists of the 3 files I uploaded on this thread (eye_animation.zip). All you need is 2 animated GIF files, and a .PHM file to "call" them or install them. So if you want to customize your own animation, just create 2 animated GIF images with 240 x 320 resolution and then with Wordpad make your own .PHM file (look at mine and you'll see how easy it is). How those 3 files are combined into the theme I can't tell you, as I say, I haven't done that yet. There are freeware programs that will disassemble an animated GIF and also freeware programs for assembling them. Just do a Google search. I hope this helps!

[stauf]

Did a lil hacking, err poking around.. /dev/mtd11 is 128k total size. I found the stock image to be 28k.. An initial guess would be 30k for total size, however in therory, since there is 128k total space, you should be able to use a larger image.

I'll continue to hack/poke around later tonight to see what I can come up with..

-Stauf

[starkrav]

Very cool! It would be great to use a higher res. image - much cleaner, more detailed. Good luck hacking!

[indiacam]

hey nice work. ..
as a part of creating a skin, can you help me with how could i make more of such animations on my own ??

There is a specific category software called "GIF Animators" or there are other professional app to like, Macromedia Flash and Fireworks, Adobe ImageReady, etc. You should be having some experience in Animation in any case. All these softwares have EXPORT option to save as GIF animation once you created an animation.

[amitn18]

This works great!!
Thanks.


I want to know whether we can unlock other sections of the phone to replace the default ringtones??? I don't have any programming knowledge, but I really want to replace the default tones, and telnetting does not allow deleting them.

[starkrav]

I made a modifed version of the animated opening - this one (attached - Eye_Ming.zip) opens from the same boot image of the eye but spells out "Ming" (see image). It closes the same as the original, starting with the Motorola logo, animating to the eye image. I just decided it would be nice to have an animated open that actually fits the phone! Anyway, I hope you like it.

Here's the final frame: