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Root [Verizon] Can't properly format a boot animation to save my life

S

Spook50

Lurker
New to the forum here, but a moderately experienced Android user. This has been driving me nuts though, so hopefully one of you guys might know what I'm doing wrong. I've been trying to format a Gears of War boot animation for use on my GSIII but can not for the life of me get it to work. Initially I tried on just the rooted JB 4.1.1 using Bootanimation4U.zip and running it in CWM with no luck. Tried Bootanimation4U.Samsungani.Only.zip as well in CWM and again no luck. Nothing I attempted in JB 4.1.1 would take. Phone just kept playing the factory boot animation. I'm now running AOKP Build 4 and have been tinkering around with that as well but with no luck. Tried putting my bootanimation.zip in system/media and data/local and verified that permissions were set to RW-R-R. Got a blank screen for the duration of bootup after that. So for curiosity's sake I downloaded Angus MacGyver's "Countdown" bootanimation, put it in data/local, verified permissions, and it worked without issue. Now that I have something that works, I tried to emulate the formatting of that with my GoW bootanimation and am still getting nowhere. My desc.txt says:

720 1280 16
p 0 0 part0

With a total of 120 images, formatted as JPGs at 480 x 769, 96 dpi and 24-bit color depth and averaging 65-70kb per file. The total size of the .zip is 3.33mb according to Root Explorer. I also verified that the .zip has no compression.

I'm at a complete loss here. Any suggestions that I might try? I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong since someone else's GSIII boot animation works just fine. I have about five total boot animations that I want to reformat for my GSIII and it'd be nice to figure out what it is I'm screwing up.
 
Where are you installing the bootanimation.zip file ? The Galaxy s3 looks for bootanimation.zip in 1 of 2 places : /system/media and/or /data/local. Note that for the bootanimation to work, It must be named bootanimation.zip exactly (lowercase). If your custom bootanimation is named anything other than that exact spelling, it will not work. Also, if your original bootanimation still exists in 1 of the above locations, you must delete it. Mine is in /data/local & works fine.
 
Aye, file name is spot on. Right now with AOKP Build 4 I'm putting them in data/local. For curiosity's sake I tried putting the same boot animation in both data/local and system/media, and just one copy in system/media. Data/local alone worked just fine for the "Countdown" animation that I verified is working, but none of the animations I'm authoring are working, regardless of where I put them. And I did make certain that any extra boot animations were deleted from both locations for all boot animations I tried using.

Edit: Just tried again with the GoW animation I've been messing with, this time resizing the pictures to 360x640 (exactly half the screen resolution of the GSIII), but leaving the resolution in desc.txt as 720x1280. Now instead of a blank screen for the entire bootup I get the shimmering "ANDROID" text in the middle of the screen. Now I'm really puzzled.
 
That is weird. Only thing I would recommend now is to try it in 1 location or the other(not both). I may be wrong but I think having it in both locations gave me issues when I was messing w/the animations.
 
I forgot . . . If you dont already have it, go to the play store & install RomToolboxPro. Not only is this a must have app for root users for too many reasons to get into now, butit has a neet feature that converts .gif files into boot animations. Also it can do bootanimation.zip previews. If the bootanimation.zip wont open or display the animation in the app, its prob corrupt or the configuration of your custom-made .zips are somehow bad . . .
 
Already have Rom ToolBox. Handy as hell to have a good collection of apps all in one place. Tried the animated GIF conversion in it to have it create a boot animation, and even with saving the GIF at exactly half the screen's resolution when I did it up in Photoshop, it gave me a 40+mb file. Still worked in the preview, and for shits and grins I tried installing it (figured out early on that data/local was the right folder to use) and got a blank screen as usual.

Just last night though I tried rebuilding it from scratch, using the same PNG images I was working with before at 360x640 again, and used Boot Animation Factory in Windows to build it. Checked the desc.txt file it gave me and it was character for character identical to the ones I had been writing before. went ahead and installed the .zip it gave me and now the animation works on bootup. Can't for the life of me figure out what the difference is, especially since all mine worked in every preview function I tried it on in AOKP. Best theory I can think of is maybe something was different in the .zip itself that my GSIII's bootloader accepted, and something it didn't like in the .zip files I was manually building.

Found a way to get it to work though, so I'll take it :D
 
Glad to hear that you got it up & running. The only other thing That I can add is that maybe it was the permissions settings on the other .zip . . . unless you already looked into that . . .
 
Spook50 said:
Already have Rom ToolBox. Handy as hell to have a good collection of apps all in one place. Tried the animated GIF conversion in it to have it create a boot animation, and even with saving the GIF at exactly half the screen's resolution when I did it up in Photoshop, it gave me a 40+mb file. Still worked in the preview, and for shits and grins I tried installing it (figured out early on that data/local was the right folder to use) and got a blank screen as usual.

Just last night though I tried rebuilding it from scratch, using the same PNG images I was working with before at 360x640 again, and used Boot Animation Factory in Windows to build it. Checked the desc.txt file it gave me and it was character for character identical to the ones I had been writing before. went ahead and installed the .zip it gave me and now the animation works on bootup. Can't for the life of me figure out what the difference is, especially since all mine worked in every preview function I tried it on in AOKP. Best theory I can think of is maybe something was different in the .zip itself that my GSIII's bootloader accepted, and something it didn't like in the .zip files I was manually building.

Found a way to get it to work though, so I'll take it :D
Click to expand...

Been a while since I created a boot animation, but I do remember when you go to Zip format you do it with NO Compression.
 
GTWalling said:
Been a while since I created a boot animation, but I do remember when you go to Zip format you do it with NO Compression.
Click to expand...

Yeah I wasn't sure how to guarantee zero compression in WinRAR or 7zip, so I just resorted to the Boot Animation Factory method and it works just fine. I'm just going to assume that's what I was getting wrong.

Using CyanogemMod 10.1 now, so now I'm trying to find a definitive answer as to whether or not it supports sound during the boot process. Be cool to have the Gears of War menu music play while the GoW Omen logo animation is playing during bootup :D

Or maybe a "FUS RO DAH!" clip that plays with a Skyrim animation....
 
Just now double checked them and they were both set to just low compression.

*groan*

Well, I figured it was something I was doing wrong. A dim bulb gets brighter :rolleyes:
 
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