Help with desc.txt for boot animation.

[Dark_Forge99]

Hope you all can help me out here. I'm trying to take this particular zipped boot animation that already works on my Droid X, and increase the size of the pictures to fit the Droid X screen resolution. I managed to resize all of the pictures, but it doesn't seem to want to work regardless.

I downloaded the same thing as shown in the video here:
Android Custom Bootanimation (Tohou project loading animation ?????) Watch Free Videos Online - Vidbox.org

And I reuploaded it here:
MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

Now I tried to edit the desc.txt file so it would work for the resized pictures. I did nothing but resize the .png files, and it doesn't want to work at all, like I'm missing something here.

Here's the old desc.txt, which WORKS on my Droid X but shows up pretty small:

320 480 30
p 1 0 part0
p 0 0 part1

And here's the newly edited desc.txt which DOES NOT work on my Droid X at all. Just a black screen where it should appear at:

480 854 30
p 1 0 part0
p 0 0 part1


A simple resolution change should fix it, right? Can you guys tell me if I'm missing something? Also, I know to put it in /data/local , so I know it's the desc.txt file that's messing up.

 

[djakrse]

I'm definitely not the authority on this subject but I've played with boot animations a little.

For one, you resized the images by more than double and it's playing at the same frame rate. That's quite a bit more for your phone to handle. Looking at that video, that animation took forever. It also didn't look smooth like 30 fps. I'm guessing it would have played a lot smoother (stable frame rate) at 15 fps. Granted using the same number of frames, it's going to play half as fast as a stable 30 fps, but if it's laggy and skipping, it's going to look like crap anyway.

I have a D1 and played with some animations. Despite my efforts, 30 fps full screen seems to be a bit much for my phone. Granted the DX has better hardware, but maybe that's part of the problem. Try bumping it down to 15 fps with maybe just part0 to prove it works with your new images.

What program(s) did you use to resize and save your PNGs? Photoshop is a great program, but it's HORRIBLE at optimizing images, (quality vs size.) I save everything as BMP and convert to PNG or JPG using Irfanview. It's free and one of the best image encoder/decoders out there.

Have you tried JPGs? I'm still experimenting on PNG vs JPG, so I'm not certain if higher compression JPGs will play as fast as PNGs. My theory is that too much compression may be harder on the phone (more processing to decode.) In my trials though, the phone seems to play them at the exact same rate, however there is a HUGE difference in file sizes. Where PNGs may result in 5-8 MB, the JPGs always give me 800 KB to a little over 1 MB. I think this is why the D2 R2D2 animation was in JPGs; it had a lot of frames and would have been huge as PNGs.

After you verify your file types and that your images work, try adding the part1. To keep the total animation going, you may have to cull down the total amount of frames. How many total frames do you have? With my animations, I've had to cut the original 30 fps video with 200+ frames down to at least a 1/3 of the frames (literally keeping only every other or every third one) at 15 fps.

Good luck and post back what works for you, please.

 

[Dark_Forge99]

For one, you resized the images by more than double and it's playing at the same frame rate. That's quite a bit more for your phone to handle. Looking at that video, that animation took forever.

Yes, but remember that the phone itself is old. It was shown to be 5/25 (2009? 2010?) when that video was recored. Most of it is black anyway, so I doubt the DX would have trouble loading each frame at 30fps with a 1GHz processor.

I did what you said by changing the fps to 15, and I got rid of part1 and left part0. Here's what it looks like:

480 854 15
p 0 0 part0

What program(s) did you use to resize and save your PNGs?

Actually I used just one program called XnView. I did a batch process where I selected all of the pictures in the folders part0 and part1, and resized them all to the DX size specs. I checked all of them, and they came up in the size I wanted in PNG format.

I have 220 pictures in total for the animation.

Also on a sidenote, when I take the original boot animation which is sized at 320x480, it plays perfectly on my DX. It's a lot smoother than that other phone shown in the video link I provided. I'm sure my DX would play it just as well if the size was increased.

 

[djakrse]

No doubt the DX is a capable machine and it may be capable of handling the increase in size no problem, it's just a LARGE difference. The image size is increased to 2 2/3 the area in pixels/squared. Think 480x320 increased to 480x854. Also, I know the DX has much better video processing, but I don't know the exact specs (I'm applying computer experience to the phones, I know it doesn't translate well.)

I'm thinking the animation is played before the OS is fully loaded, so while the phone may play hires video when fully booted, it may not have the same capability when the processor is busy loading the drivers and OS. A PC with a 1 GHz processor and a crappy GPU or a good one without drivers is going to play animation sh*tty compared to a 800 MHz with a good addon graphics card. Again, I'm not that experience with phone hardware/OS.

You said:

I did what you said by changing the fps to 15, and I got rid of part1 and left part0. Here's what it looks like:

480 854 15
p 0 0 part0

That should loop part0 at half the framerate of the original. Does it work or still no go?

 

[Dark_Forge99]

It still doesn't work.

Can someone just download this and test this out themselves? I don't want to be the only one working on this.

 

[djakrse]

I've dloaded it and will give it a go when I have a chance. One thing I noticed from the desc.txt that came with the D2R2D2 boot ani, http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...e-understanding-coding-bootanimation-zip.html, is the last comment line,

# must have newline after each part

This doesn't seem to mean much on my D1, as none of the animations I've used, the one you're starting with included, have had spaces after the lines. Maybe it matters somehow on the D2 or DX. I'm just reaching here. I've not downloaded any other animations taken directly from the D2 or DX that were formatted in that manner. This animation is the only one I've seen that used JPGs either.

The animations I've made with that many images looping in part1 either black screened and the OS eventually loaded or they sort of boot-looped, replaying the animation over and over -- never showing the boot logo, but playing part0, then part1 looping.... then suddenly replaying part0, then part1 looping-- over. and over. :icon_evil:

 

[Dark_Forge99]

Can anybody else respond and help me out?

 

[djakrse]

I'm just curious when you zip up your files if you are archiving without compression?

For example, when adding files to archive in 7zip, choose store.

 

[ArmyDude]

I'm just curious when you zip up your files if you are archiving without compression?

For example, when adding files to archive in 7zip, choose store.

+1 on this. I've noticed serious issues if you forget to change the mode within 7zip to store.

 

[Dark_Forge99]

Just tried it with the "Store" method. I previously left it as "Normal" before.

Still doesn't work. Black screen. And I'm sad to see no one else has really replied to help.

 

[Dark_Forge99]

If it helps at all, I'm using WinRAR to make it a .zip format.

 

[ArmyDude]

Are the images 480 X 854 or 854 X 480? And are they jpg or png?

 

[Dark_Forge99]

480 X 854 (higher than wider) and .png format.

 

[ArmyDude]

Try jpg files. Png files tend to be large and usually cause hesitation. Jpgs are more compressed.

 

[Dark_Forge99]

Is that guaranteed to work, or is all this just speculation?

Edit: Seeing how the first bootanimation had no problem playing those on my phone, I highly doubt the filetype is the problem here.