Everyone knows that in 1995, Toy Story
made history as the first fully computer animated film. But what most people
don't know is that a full year earlier,
a little Canadian studio called Mainframe Entertainment released the
first fully computer animated TV show
reboot. It was quirky. It was heartwarming. And it was full of
adventure with each episode exploring exciting new worlds. So then why hasn't
anybody heard of it? Well, being Canadian, it wasn't as broadly
distributed. And making matters worse, due to poor media preservation practices
at the time, the original quality masters were thought to be lost for many
years. So, in spite of an official release existing, for decades, the best
way to enjoy the show has been a pirated Russian DVD. Reboot and its fans
deserved so much better, and they're
finally getting it. partly thanks to the sponsor of this video, Kioxia. Data
integrity is their passion, and this project was only possible thanks to
their support. But what data? Reboot only found a limited audience during its
TV run and the only means that mainframe had of reading those original master
tapes with the full quality digital files was discarded years ago.
Thankfully, in 2023, Jacob and Raquel,
the creators of the Reboot Rewind documentary, got a brilliant idea of
asking Mainframe, pretty please, very nicely, if they could try and do
something with those tapes, cuz you know how companies normally do that, right?
Except Mainframe said yes, lending them all of the master tapes for reboot. All
of it. So, huzzah, problem solved,
right? Well, no. See, it turns out that
getting any files off of these thick boys is pretty much like pulling the
data logs from a crashed alien spaceship. So, the Reboot Rewind project
was stuck with no plan, no budget, and
no idea where to even look for a machine that could read these tapes. They threw
up a desperate Facebook post. Does anyone have a D1 deck? As luck would
have it, someone over in Germany had not one, not two, but three up for auction.
Huzzah. Yeah. If you thought they were going to
be cheap and not broken, that's where we
came in. When our community flagged the incredible preservation work that Reboot
Rewind was doing, we partnered up with Kyioia to cover the cost of both the
machines and some of the rare parts and supplies that would be needed to get
them up and running. And now one of them is and you can actually see the results
for yourself on YouTube. Reboot is a
little older and it does show. But hey,
at least it's no longer held back by mid90s encoding quality and it looks
beautiful in its own way. As for the other machines, well, they're kind of
nice to haves now that the first one is working, but because the footage needs
to be captured rather than just dragged and dropped, having more machines will
help the process go faster. And with the tapes continuing to deteriorate by the
hour the clock is ticking. So, our goal
for today is to pop open this absolute
treasure of cuttingedge technology from a bygone era and maybe get it working.
If you want to learn more about the Reboot Rewind team, by the way, they've done a series of documentaries that you
can check out at the link down below. We, on the other hand, are going to get
right into the tech tips and talk about a tape format that I'd never even heard
of before this project, D1. Imagine
this. It's 1986 and the executives at
Sony, riding a bubble economy, have told their worldclass engineers that money is
no object. Make the absolute best video
format in the world. That's what this is. It's like the McLaren F1 of8s video
technology. D1 physically is the largest
video cassette tape ever made. And like DVHS, which would arrive in home cinemas
over a decade later, it is purely
digital. But unlike DVHS, it was
intended for professional use. So it was completely uncompressed. No codec, just
bitmapped images written directly to tape. That is why Kyokia's help was so
critical. Remember guys, I said we needed to capture this uncompressed
video. So, their CM7R drives were an essential part of the entire workflow
because they can easily handle the 40 GB
of raw video from each of these 30-year-old tapes safely and without
bottlenecks. And that's essential because with the state of these tapes,
they might literally only get one shot at a good transfer. By the way, if you
thought the tapes were big, the decks are on a whole other level. These
behemoths are 250 lb of metal and glass,
draw 650 W of power, and inside each
one, you will find six or seven Intel
80186 processors communicating on an internal Ethernet network. This is no
compromise design at its absolute best,
but almost no one has ever seen one because to buy one new adjusted for
inflation would be a cool third of a million. So, I guess the 15 grand we
paid was a deal even though they were all broken. I should probably
acknowledge, by the way, that we are not on our normal set. Welcome to
Disappearing Inc., a local company that's dedicated to not only rescuing
classic computers, but also repairing and restoring them to their former
glory. And the place really is glorious,
isn't it? Almost as glorious as the skill set of the man who runs it, Mark.
Hello. At the peak of the D1's run,
there were maybe 100 people who were
qualified to work on these machines. 30 years later, he might be the only one
left who can fix them and definitely the only one under the age of 40. How'd you
um how'd you learn that? Uh local community college course.
>> No, no, no, no. I was accidentally training myself for this job from a
young age because I grew up with a fascination with video equipment, but I
couldn't afford any of this stuff. So, everything I got was broken. It was all castoffs and old computers generally no
one wants to talk about them at HP and Dell and things like that. So, I just kind of had to figure it all out. So
sourcing some test sacrificial tapes and recapping the shoe box size power
supplies back here was no problem for Mark. But what was a problem was the
brakes. >> Yeah. And it didn't look like it originally. We got these errors from the
machines about the clock signal being somehow too fast and spent way too long
trying to figure that out. And finally at the end of it discovered that the same board that sets up the clocks is
also the one that runs the brakes. So when it saw something was wrong with
him, >> it just stopped working. >> Yeah. It just gave up. >> So if you'd known the brake was the
problem, you could >> have saved months. >> And that was exactly in time for another
huge problem to raise its head or heads
as it were. The tape heads to be precise.
>> For you younglings out there, the tape head is the part of the machine that
actually reads the zeros and the ones from the tapes. And the D1's heads are
remarkably precise. So much so that they
are only rated for 500 hours of use. 500
hours. I thought this is supposed to be a professional standard. After that
time, they're intended to be replaced.
And the most workingest of the three machines we bought. Yeah, that tape head
was already at 650 hours. So then what
did we do at that point then? >> Well, uh, we panicked and we despared.
And then a miracle happened. Herbert Han, a man in Germany who has been
incredibly helpful to us, said he knew a technician from back in the day. He was
an elderly gentleman now, long retired, but he might still have a couple of spare parts for us. And boy, did he. In
fact, he had not one but two brand new, never used BTS refurbished heads still
in his garage. >> Wow. >> It was just a cool $8,000 to buy them.
>> Right. but wasn't our money.
>> That was actually one of the points in this project where it could have all
gone completely south because those parts, my understanding is ended up all
getting kind of parted out and shipped off shortly after we made our offer. So,
if we hadn't gone in and taken them, >> yeah, within weeks those were sold off
to other companies who still have to maintain these crazy things. And we've
spoken to a couple of those companies and they're not fond of sharing parts.
>> Makes sense. >> So, we had one shot and we took it and
it's all thanks to you guys. >> Well, we we do our best. As far as I'm
concerned, uh if we can get the show restored, then mission accomplished.
>> Well, I am so happy to say that it's because of these opportunities. We got
some big news to share. >> Oh, is this Are we dropping something on
you? >> No, wait for later in the video. >> What? >> Yep.
>> Wait, you're not going to tell me? >> No. No. >> Okay. I guess we're getting to that
later. For now, we're going to try and repair the brake on this one.
>> We are indeed. >> Okay, let's do it. >> So, are we doing this for real?
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, we'll just put a super cut down version in the YouTube video,
but at LMG.gg/flatplane, people can get the whole video of us
going through and giving it our best shot. >> Well, in that case, let's do it. These
machines need a lot of service, and you can tell that the Germans put some
thought into it. So,
It goes like that. >> So, the Germans can make a thing
serviceable when they want to. >> Someone should tell BMW. The work I'm
going to be doing is mostly from the top. Okay. >> So, we're not actually working under here. I do need you to warn you, there's
a chance the power supply explodes while we're working on it. >> Sick. >> Cuz um haven't rebuilt this one yet.
>> Sick. >> So, if smoke starts pouring out the back, that's good content.
>> This guy knows YouTube. Right. >> Big thing on these decks is that because
the tape is moving so fast, there has to be a really good, reliable way to speed
it up and slow it down and stop it on a moment's notice. What if something goes wrong with the machine? What if the
power goes out? What if you just get to the end of your scene and want to stop
it? So, they've got these brakes like a car that like clamp down on the spools
and stop the tape and the machine checks every time it turns on to make sure
those are working. Like, it spins it up and it clamps it on
>> and they just wear out like anything else, >> right? The brakes do.
>> They do. They're mechanical. So, every time you use them, plus just when you let them sit for 30 years, there's these
big springs inside, they kind of get loose. So, we're going to go in there and do a very non-German repair to these
things. It involves grabbing some springs with a pair of pliers and like kind of twisting them a bit and, you
know, causing some people to roll in their graves and putting a little fresh
grease in there and crossing our fingers and with a little bit of luck, it'll get
that error cleared. >> What are you doing right now? >> We're borrowing the control panel that
works, which is to say, we're returning it to the machine we borrowed it from before.
>> Sick. So, we have two out of three. Unfortunately, as you saw inside,
there's a lot of custom chips in these things. And one of the custom chips, and one of the control panels has gone dead.
So, we have three machines, but only two of them that we can actually talk to at
the moment. So, we simply put it back on over here. And this machine has what
looks like a serial port, but is in fact something incredibly German and
proprietary. Uh, and the control panel will go, "Oh, hey, you're a 500."
>> Okay. >> Some of these people did go on to work at BMW then.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I suspect >> this I guess goes here. >> If you can get it in there for me,
that'd be great. >> Small hands power activate form of small
dainty hands. >> That's perfect. I got these big man hands. I can't get that thing in there
without 5 minutes of swearing. Fantastic. Look at that. So, that's
enough that we can control this machine. >> I helped. >> Yeah. Don't let anyone tell you Lionus
was instrumental in this project. So, the brakes on this thing are deep inside
here. They're underneath these sort of brown spindle looking things,
>> right? >> Because they're the spindles, you see? Right. >> And we need to get in there. And the
only way we can do it is if we take the entire part you put the tape into out.
>> Brilliant. >> So, the good news is it's surprisingly serviceable.
>> We're going to once more raise this thing up
>> and then we're going to start unscrewing things. We need to loosen a couple of
screws that hold the mechanism together.
Oh, this is the real pain in the ass one cuz when this raises up, it kind of
blocks this. So, I need to kind of brace
the mechanism a bit. >> Oh, well, I can hold it. >> Um, it's if you do that, it might break.
>> I need you to hold on to this as tight
as you can and try and prevent it from turning. And I'll do the same over here.
And then we get to do the opposite. There it goes. When we go to put this
thing back together. >> And I helped. I think if we're very
careful,
>> it feels like it should run in a clean
room, >> right? >> Like it looks like something that should
only work in a completely sterile, perfect environment, but like you had it
just open there and it was just working. I don't get it. >> Well, the good news is that once the
thing gets spinning fast enough, it kind of flings the dust out of the way.
>> Oh, genius. >> Yeah. So, in a way, it's not quite as
critical as you think. The other half, though, is you just clean the thing constantly as you're using it because
more than the dust that comes in from the outside is the bits of tape that get
flung off every time you play the thing. So, I spend more time cleaning brown
junk out from the inside than I do about the dust in the room.
>> All right. So, brakes. >> Yes, they are under here. And you can
feel if you try and turn that, it turns easier one way than the other. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's super easy
clock counterclockwise and then it's really tight clockwise.
>> Yeah. And it should be even tighter than that. So, it should really clamp it
hard. But it's not doing that anymore. So, we need to go in there and make some
adjustments. >> Okay. That's the spring we're adjusting.
>> That underneath this little piece of foam or felt, I should say, that is the
brake. >> Seriously? >> Yep. >> Well, how the hell are we supposed to
make adjustments to that with any degree of precision? >> We're not. We're going to use pliers.
So, this here is a brake. Doesn't look like much, but this is the entirety of
the core mechanism. This is the part that actually grabs it together. Pulls
it apart. >> Yeah. So, we go grab. >> Yep. >> Brakes are on.
>> We go apart. >> Breaks her off. >> Breaks her off. Easy peasy.
>> Right. Unfortunately, it's not squeezing it quite hard enough. And when it does,
sometimes it gets stuck. And oh yeah, there was originally some sort of grease in here. I have no idea what, but it's
kind of sticky now. So, we're going to replace that. So, we just tighten the
whole thing like that just a little bit. We don't need much. Just a little
dabble, do you? >> Thank you.
>> I knew I was here for a reason. >> And there's a little piece of felt whose
job is basically to stop that grease from getting thrown out into the machine.
>> Mhm. >> You know, if it starts flinging around at high speeds, it'll go in here instead
of onto a tape. Then we need our magic piece of brass that holds everything
together. And I look at the other one to figure out how I have to reassemble it.
See, real technicians still have to look at the instructions sometimes, too. But
in lie of that, we leave one of them assembled so we can look at it and see
how it goes back together. That's a real important tip. >> A tech tip even you might say.
>> You might say you would see how it engages sooner. It pulls a little
farther. >> All right. >> And so Oh, yeah.
>> Brakes on, brakes off here. Here we go. >> So brakes on.
>> See how tight that is now? >> Yeah. So that's pull that >> here. You can actually really Oh, no.
No. Here. Don't pull it. Don't pull it yet. This is really great cuz you can
really see that that is not moving. Get
the rod. Now she spins. Oh, and she stops.
>> We fixed the thing. Lus, can we get a vending machine to work?
>> You want a vending machine? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Oh, just like for the fun of it kind of
thing. >> I mean, they're not expensive.
>> Yo, root beer.
>> This is a good surprise. Now that you've seen some of it for yourself, you may
have a concept of an idea of how hard Mark has been working not only to get
these machines up and running, but to keep them that way throughout the
capture process. And the most fun part,
remember how I said the condition of the tapes ain't too great? Yeah, that was an
understatement. These are suffering from something called sticky shed syndrome,
which basically means that the glue holding the magnetic particles to the
tape is literally turning into gunk with
every passing day. So, if you guys want to support this project, make sure you
donate to their cause at the link in the description. Are you guys selling these
shirts, by the way? Cuz they're super cool. I wish. Oh, okay. Apparently,
there was some, you know, IP complications. I guess you'll just have
to buy our shirts then at ltstore.com. Now, our focus today has been on the D1
decks and on the tapes, but that's just part of the puzzle and it would be a
crime to not also acknowledge the work that this man has done. Thanks to Brian,
the team has a solid capture workflow that includes custom software to manage
the decks, track errors, and make sure that the restoration process is moving
efficiently. They can currently transfer up to a dozen tapes on a good day with
the end goal being capturing all 260
tapes, which is the 47 episodes plus multiple edits, unfinished copies, and
bonus content like the cutscenes from the PS1 game.
>> How's that progress going, Brian?
>> It's a long process, but you know, this is the problem with this technology. You
know, they put so much effort into editing every episode possible. At the
same time, this was done on CRT TVs. And for all those youngans, it hurts to say
that that didn't grow up with CRTs, they're not familiar with, you know,
video interlacing where persistence of vision makes it look like a full
picture. But when you're digital now, you get scan lines or, you know,
>> and it looks nasty. >> Exactly. Right. So, just like VSync,
right? You know, nobody likes to have VSync off and then see tearing. Well,
that's exactly what we're seeing now that we're all digital. So, we're actually going back and basically quasi
re-editing the show while keeping it true to its source. Oh, you know,
>> good gravy. >> Yeah, you know, 43,000 frames per
episode and and you know, we're dealing with multiple tapes per episode.
>> So, I'm sure Kio would love for me to ask how their technology contributes to
that part of the workflow. >> Absolutely. Yeah, Kioxia has been a huge
help on this. You know, we've been dealing with spinning hard drives as
cheap as we can get. It's a lot of data to work through. So Kioxia's drives have
allowed us to basically work through the files at a rate that is much more real
time than previous. >> Can you give me like FPS comparison?
>> Yeah. So when we're doing a pipeline direct from our RAWs over to uh ProRes,
we're we were getting about 7 FPS on a
good day if you're splitting across spinning hard drives >> and that's going to wear out your read
head. That's going to be just bad all around. >> Absolutely. and you know data redundancy
and the whole project here is focusing on the need to retain that data longterm
and Kyok says drives are actually offering us the ability to trust that we
can rely on that data basically being there when we power the systems back up
>> and what kind of FPS can you do with a high performance SSD by comparison
>> essentially we are at almost real-time playback so 25 35 frames per second on a
good time so we can actually go and see all of our edits and play them back in
real time and not have to focus and see individual frame issues that you really
wouldn't see frame by frame. And Jacob and I both, we have spent tons of nights
uh rendering these. And when you spend 2 or 3 hours on an episode, render it,
submit it over, find a frame issue, go back, do it again, and it's just
crunching hours on hours, right? So, we've got 260 tapes here. Do the math of
that offset. I mean, Kioxia definitely saved us massive amounts of time.
>> Hundreds of hours. >> Absolutely. >> How many episodes are left to capture?
Well, in fact, as of today, there's only one.
>> Really? >> There is one reboot episode tape left to capture, and we're going to start it up.
>> Oh, is that the special surprise? >> That's the surprise. >> Oh, sick.
>> You get to watch the last reboot episode tape come across.
>> Let's go. Hopefully, I'm not a bad luck charm. Okay. Well, let's do it.
>> Let's do it. >> We've got a couple other pretty special people here with us for this final
capture. Jacob, do you want to tell the people what you're about? >> Hi. Yeah, I co-directed and edited the
Reboot Rewind documentary. Uh, and I was one of the people that kind of found the
these tapes in Mainframes archives sort of with the original intention of just
finding better quality footage of the show for the documentary, but now it's
turned into a much bigger project. >> Very cool work. And then we've also got
someone like really special that we hit around in the back here. This is Gavin
Blair, who was one of the co-creators of Reboot. Uh, wrote, did some voice
acting. Uh, >> how cool is this? This is very cool. I
mean, we raised a generation of nerds
and now they're doing remarkable work, deserving history, which, you know, as
an old guy who's not long for this world, it's great to see this history
being preserved. >> Thanks for being here, creating the show and uh just kind of showing showing
support for what these guys are doing. I I think we can all agree that it is
tragic when these sorts of things are just lost forever. I mean, not lost, but
not preserved with the kind of quality that they could be. >> Absolutely. Yeah. We made history with
the quality of the show we made, and you're seeing it now.
>> It didn't do justice for so many years. >> Now, finally, the way we saw it when we
made it, which is remarkable. >> That's a great final line. It's time to
press capture. Are we ready, Mark? >> Yeah. Let me pull out the tape. All
right. Are we ready to do this? >> Yes. >> So, we're going to go ahead insert our
tape. Watch the magic happen.
>> That's terrifying the way it just like manhandles that fragile, delicate
>> tape that's coming apart at the glue. >> This has a little auto adjust menu here
right on screen. >> Clean, isn't it? >> And it's about to get better. So, here on the screen, we can actually see the
four different video heads, their signal strengths. This is the uncorrectable
errors. We're go to the corrected errors. We're going to do an auto
adjustment. This is looking at the levels of the signals coming off. It'll glitch momentarily on the video. And
then if there's still an outstanding one, it's got a tiny smidge here. What
we do is go for the Allen keys and we're gonna just go slightly adjust.
>> That's insane. >> While it's running, >> that's insane what you're doing right now, sir.
>> Mhm. Yeah, that's too far. Back it off. >> She But that was that was up to like
here at the beginning and now it's gone. Now we're going to do another auto adjust to make sure it's settled.
>> And again, it'll glitch momentarily. That's normal. But there we go. Now
these are uh correct or detected errors and they're almost gone. we switch over
to the uncorrectables and there's basically zero. So that's the difference
between just naively shoving the tape into the machine and hoping for the best
and tuning it to each one. There's some things where we simply cannot go and get
another copy of. And what turns out when this thing's in frame by frame slow-mo,
the tracking has time to catch up to wild changes. We've seen a couple tapes
where the deck that recorded it must have had a broken roller or something cuz the tape was just doing this the
whole way through. And so I could tune it and it would work and then it go
right back out again. All right, let's see it. >> All four channels of audio. We resume
our data log over here. Uh, we spin you up and from now this computer is in
control. I click clip and it instructs
the machine to start moving and it will instruct the machine to stop when it
gets to the end. This is the real-time error log that Brian developed and that's where I was adjusting it. You see
those spikes? Yeah, >> that was me tuning it.
>> Right. >> And now you can see how just flat it is. That's what we want.
>> And that's it. There it is. >> That's the last tape of reboot episodes.
We've done it. >> That is so cool. Well, thanks for
letting me be here for it. This is >> making it possible. >> Absolutely incredible.
>> Now, this has been a dream come true, I think, for all of us. I never imagined
little six-year-old me looking at that tiny CRT in my living room that 30 years
later I was going to be a part of rescuing a show just so incredible. and
to have gone through this, let's be honest, incredible pain in the ass
journey. I would absolutely do it again if I had to. This has been a pleasure.
>> And that's almost the most important point. I think as cool as the tech was,
the best part of this story is the human side. The incredible outpouring of fan
support has helped to show Mainframe, the studio that created Reboot, that
there is still a massive amount of appreciation for both their art and for
their innovation. Again, I can't emphasize this enough. It was the first
real 30inute TV show that was rendered on a computer, pioneering a new
animation standard that is still used by kids shows today. It was so far ahead of
its time and I'm so impressed by the work that's been done and will still be
done and I'm so proud to have had an opportunity to be part of it. Massive
shout out to Kyioia. They have been an incredible partner for us. When there's
something that we just look at and we go, "Wow, wouldn't that be so cool to
do?" whether it's getting a pi calculation world record or or doing
this. If it involves storage, they basically go, "All right, cool. We're
in." And it makes incredible things like this possible. Check them out in the
video description. Genuine thank you to them. And a huge thank you to you guys
for watching. Uh, and hey, if you're looking for something else to watch, why
not check out Reboot Rewind? If you like videos about older video formats, why
don't you check out the time that PLF and I watched the same movie on 10
different mostly obsolete video formats. There were some really wacky ones over