N900 – Custom Boot Video
This is awesome, sorry I’m really excited about this little geeky mod that I found over at talk.maemo.org.
If you are getting bored of the old “nokia handshake” boot video as I’m sure most of you are (it’s been going on for how long now?), never fear because Maemo is near 
If you have rootsh installed on your N900 you can now change the boot video, in fact if you wanted you could have multiple boot videos.
So how is this all done and where do I get the videos from? It seems that also long as the video can be played by the native media player on the N900 then you can use it at boot, which means we could potentially use any video, provided it’s not too long. Personally I’m a creative monkey so I won’t be creating my own videos, once again this is were our community friends have stepped in to help us.
There are many threads flying around over maemo.org about boot videos including a small post over on the wiki.
These are a few of the videos that I have like so far:
This I think is the original and thanks to @Claesbas for sharing:
Thread Link
This one is called Shodan:
Thread Link
This is the one I use:
Thread link
If you want to find more try searching for “boot video” at talk.maemo.org.
Now we get to the how. This is simply the method that I found easiest for myself, and some of you might find better/different methods within the above threads.
Before I start let me tell you that I am not a linux guru, and take no responsibility for any damage you may place upon your beloved N900.
Firstly you will need to download your avi file to your Documents folder.
You will then need to download a default.conf file to the same location.
Now the most important thing to remember for those that don’t understand the file system for maemo, is that this code will work if and only if you have saved the above documents to your Documents folder.(NOTE NOT your MyDocs folder)
sudo gainroot
mv /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/default.conf /etc/hildon-welcome.d/
mv /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/myboot.avi /opt/
cd /usr/share/hildon-welcome/media/
ln -s /opt/myboot.avi myboot.avi
In the above code I have called my video myboot.avi, which means that the default.conf file needs have the same name for the AVI inside, for example my conf file looks like this:
[hildon-welcome]
filename=myboot.avi
I have noticed that some people have add issues with the above x-term code at the stage of the first mv(move command). If you have a problem try do a copy instead. Note this will mean that you default.conf file will still be found in your Documents folder after the code is run:
sudo gainroot
cp /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/default.conf /etc/hildon-welcome.d/
mv /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/myboot.avi /opt/
cd /usr/share/hildon-welcome/media/
ln -s /opt/myboot.avi myboot.avi
So if this hasn’t made you happy or the idea of using the x-term to change your boot video scares you then check this thread out. @Claesba has started brainstorming/discussions regarding creating an application to help make this process easier and code free.
Now that we got all the geeky-coding stuff out the way , lets go and show off our new boot videos.
[hildon-welcome]
You can check maemobriefs’s “how to” in few steps, i find it easier to do… : http://maemobriefs.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-change-boot-splash-video.html
Janitor, thanks for the post. But to be honest that is NOT easier to follow as there is now mentioned of how to actually move or copy the files to the locations you mentions.
For those who aren’t having any luck with the code, there’s now an app (don’t know how long it’s been out) called BootScreen and it sorts out all the code for you. All you have to do is ‘add’ an AVI file or two or three, and arrange them in order, and save that order, and you’re DONE ;D
I’m planning on doing a review on bootscreen sometime soon sorry for the delay guys.