This Was Almost Lost to History

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

Thanks again to KIOXIA for sponsoring this video! You can learn more about KIOXIA at: https://americas.kioxia.com/en-us/business/ssd/enterprise-ssd/cm7-r.html?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=LinusTechTips&utm_campaign=Reboot+Rewind%28KIOXIA+Enterprise+SSD%29 Before Toy Story, there was ReBoot—the first fully computer-animated TV show. Thought lost to time and decay, we partnered with the Reboot Rewind team and Kioxia to bring the original, uncompressed masters back to life. Join us as we try to fix the incredibly rare, $300k D1 tape deck needed for preservation! This video wouldn't have been possible without the ReBoot Rewind team, Disappearing Inc, and Mainframe Studios. You can learn more about them at: https://www.youtube.com/@ReBootRewindDoc https://gofund.me/e35e309fa https://disappearinginc.ca/ https://youtube.com/@MainframeStudios Discuss on the forum: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1633188-before-toy-story%E2%80%A6-there-was-reboot/ Check out our Channel Partners: Secretlab - Grab a TITAN Evo ergonomic gaming chair: https://lmg.gg/secretlabltt PIA - Get the VPN of our choice: https://www.piavpn.com/ltt dbrand - Buy a "Circuit" series skin for your device: https://dbrand.com/pcb ► SHOP LTT PRODUCTS: https://lttstore.com ► GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ON FLOATPLANE: https://lmg.gg/lttfloatplane ► DIVE DEEPER ON THE LLT LABS WEBSITE: https://lmg.gg/labs ► SPONSORS, AFFILIATES, AND PARTNERS: https://lmg.gg/partners Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group. Affiliate links powered in part by https://affilimate.com/ Linus Sebastian is an investor in Framework Computer, Inc and HexOS by Eshtek. CHAPTERS --------------------------------------------------- 0:00 Intro 0:27 A Show Lost to Time 1:00 OR SO YOU THOUGHT 2:28 How LTT & KIOXIA Helped Out 3:43 What is a D1 Tape? 4:56 The MONSTROUS Decks 5:37 Disappearing Inc! 6:13 Meet Mark 7:11 A HUGE Problem Arises 7:55 IT'S A MIARACLE 9:30 BTS Deck Repairing 15:53 Vending Machine Break 16:09 Mark is a Wizard 17:09 Meet Bryan, the Restoration KING 18:30 KIOXIA was a Huge Help 20:05 The Big Surprise 20:30 Special Guests 21:51 Capturing the Last Episode 24:25 THANK YOU ReBoot Fans 25:04 THANK YOU KIOXIA 25:34 Outro