Not an Ardour related post, just fun (for me at least):
The past few weeks I have trashed (for recycling) 8 PowerMac G5 towers and 5 MacPro towers. They have been in storage for many years and it was time to part with them. I hope they will find a good reincarnation. I did pull one of the very cool dual CPU modules from a MacPro to display on top of my workbench. I need to figure out how to creatively light it. Ideas welcomed.
Such beautiful and well built hardware, but so damn big, heavy and power hungry. Aināt nobody got space for that especially 15 of them! Also threw out an EchoLab video switcher (digital SD), a Chyron Duet (digital SD) and 7 other 5x5x5 pallets of SD crap. Much of it two Grass Valley 300 switchers and parts. Those things occupied an entire rack, EACH!
Next on deck is around 15 Panasonic DVCPro machines, several Sony BVU-800s (none of these are in working condition with missing boards) and a ton of old huge HP computers, but right now, my last pallet is full so itās going to have to wait until after a pick up.
It was a little painful throwing some of this stuff out, but the company has been hoarding old equipment for so long there was literally no more storage space available for legitimate stuff (and we have a LOT of storage space). The old Macs are even banned to be used because the MacOS is not upgradable. Sure, Linux would fit nicely, but that doesnāt change the fact that these are still old and slow G5s, extremely power hungry and HUGE.
I did save one G5 Xserve but no idea yet what to do with it. It MAY still go out eventually. Weāll see.
My criteria for items to throw out is:
If itās standard definition, it goes. I have tested items for archival purposes and a few good ones survived. This includes a few VHS and Beta machines, One SuperVHS AG7750 deck, one BVU-xxx and two DVCPro decks. Nothing else worked.
If itās analog, it goes (also with a few exceptions, see #1). This mainly includes old analog satellite receivers and SD only satellite receivers.
If itās more than 20 years old, it goes.
Old video coax cables. We literally had MILES of this stuff stored. Probably ~sixty 3x3x3 boxes of it.
If itās a a sealed new part, SAVE IT, unless itās a capacitor. A lot of stuff fit into this one, but itās still all for old electronics, mostly for Sony BVU series decks, but there could be some demand. I will let corporate decide.
Hey.
Those G5 macs could be good audio workstations, but i donāt have a clue if Power Mac achitecture is still supported by soft devs in modern day linux distrosā¦possible. If thereās Intel-based G5 MacPros(especialy Xeon ones), you could definitely use those. Those are powerful, we used them in college for video editing, audio sould fly on it.
I remember i even had a Power Mac G4 Tower about 10 years ago with a beautiful āCinemaā display which i used like a audio recorder, with M-Audio Delta 1010 inside, and Reaper installed.
Canāt remember what was the OS installedā¦was it on standard MacOS, or was it some kind of Ubuntu/AntiX somethingā¦canāt remember.
As a recorder it was great, but only basic processing of audio tracks was possible with it, processor couldnāt handle many plug-in instances. It could play compessed HD formats, so i watched many movies on it, when feeling bored or tired .
Yes, it was power hungryā¦and occasionaly noisey, so i mostly keept the chasee in a iso-cab made just for it. No way you could put that chasee in the same room with the acoustic sound source you are trying to capture
It ended up as a parts-replacement for a archive machine (same type as mine) in my friends printing shop.
I still think that comp was a thing of beauty, like a cool retro car.
Edit: I just found out there is no such thing as Intel Xeon based Mac G5 . That was a shifting time period, and we used an external raid drive from and old Mac on a new Intel Mac, so i tought that dual xeon machine was also a G5.
A lot of fun stuff to have had experience with even though it is now obsolete. Iād love to have a top notch professional working VHS machine for SD transfers before the tapes are completely ruined from age but Iām just a hobbyist working to preserve a large (mostly bootleg) collection of concert stuff that will never be restored and modernized by the labels or publishers. Very few bands are worth the expense or merit a professional revisited Studio quality feature film of their work. There are a lot of enthusiasts trying the Video upscaling thing posting on YouTube but only a small percentage are actually making improvements, often the footage is only gaining more collateral damageā¦ anyway I digressā¦ Thanks for sharing the production gear pornā¦lol
@ Ljuba Yeah, the G5s all were PPCs until they switched to Intel, but used the same huge aluminium cases but were better designed inside. Very heavy! They all had Blackmagic Decklink video cards in them too, which I pulled since most were HD. I also pulled the HDDs just to later retrieve the magnets from.
@ GMaq Yes, good working professional grade VHS machines are becoming harder and harder to find. We had a nice mixture of both Panasonic and JVC decks but most of the JVC decks have disappeared. The Pans were way better anyway IMO.
Video upscaling does not work well at all. You simply cannot add stuff that is not there. I have seen a few good ones that were done with AI, but AI DOES add stuff that really is not there, sometimes even to the point of ridiculousness! lol
Paramount once sent us a promotional VHS tape of a Star Trek Voyager episode (The Gift) without any sound tweaking, music and even sound effects. You can clearly hear the cast walking on the wooden set floors. Itās quite an interesting look (or listen) at how much sound sweetening they actually do to make a polished product. I still have that tape in my collection. Hopefully it will still play.
Also found a Tascam BR-20T reel to reel deck. The āTā stands for Time Code on the center track, but shamefully it appears to have been dropped at some point. Shame too, as they are extremely high end 15ips tape decks. The RS422 adaptor for it looks to be in working condition however.
Having used the Topaz Labs stuff for a few years now I have seen pretty significant improvements in the AI upscaling, at this point on bad analog footage you can at least hold the existing picture quality from 480p to 1080p which is as good as itās going to get anyway, as you rightly say you canāt get back anything lost and every thing you do has a cost/benefit ratio ie noise reduction removes detail and sharpening makes macroblock artifacts and eats encoding bitrate etc. etc.
I donāt even try to work with 4K, the file sizes and encoder demands are insane even on very fast machines. If I can translate and hold the existing SD quality to an HDTV or projector thatās all my modest expectations are. It would be nice if hardware upscaling was a bit more predictable and suited to analog SD footage, in my experiences so far restoring SD content in itās native resolution and relying on TV/Player hardware upscaling is far less satisfactory than software upscaling. Of course just like in Audioā¦ the better the source material the better the final product.
Oh the beauty of film. I love seeing the old television shows shot on film from the 50s and 60s that have been transferred to HD. The 16mm stuff even looks fantastic and the black and white ones look super amazing. ie Gunsmoke.
We once had a 16mm film chain at the station. It used optical analog audio. We would run syndicated MASH shows from it back in the 80s and the occasional movie as well.
I have had semi-decent luck transferring DVDs and even Laserdiscs, and upscaling them. The ones that are interlaced are a bit more of a PITA. I never understood why the NAB stuck with it for 1080i. I know, it was just easier back then with the existing technology, but now, there really is no need for 1080i anymore, except for broadcasters. I believe ATSC 3.0 addresses this however. Not sure what the European standard is doing in that regard.
Well while weāre offtopic anywayā¦ If anyone is interested here is a sample of some horrid Video source and HD resultā¦ note this was a legitimately purchased āimportā I think the legality of the so-called Video āimportā market is probably tenuous but somehow it exists on loopholes and lack of legal interestā¦
This is a clip from a televised Grand Funk Railroad concert at Madison Square garden in 1972. This is the only available source and I have seen numerous repackagings of this same damaged source. I would guess at least two generations of VHS bouncing and whoever digitized this obviously had no skills or the worst capture equipment ever and left the VCR OSD running for the entire copy so there is a huge rectangular timecode through the whole film FFS! As a result there is blurring and halos etc. on the VHS source and heavy chroma and macroblock artifacting from terrible MPEG-2 encoding not to mention aliasing artifacts from poor deinterlacing. If this wasnāt an incredible concert and if the original source was obtainable I wouldnāt have bothered trying to polish this turd at all but I love this showā¦ This is probably a pretty realistic demonstration of what can be expected from the worst dumpster-dive compromised Video, obviously results with clean pro-shot sources are much better.
Topaz Labs Video AI on Windows was used for the upscaling, The Video was edited in Cinelerra and Audio EQād with Ardourās Video timeline capabilities in AV Linuxā¦ Iām still working on it but will post the final complete concert on my Video site page when finishedā¦
*EDITā¦ the full concert is up on my Video page if anyone is interested:
Itās actually pretty impressive. I love GFRās early stuff. So rocking and that B3 really rocks too. Next you could do some stem separation on it and create a stereo mix.
I actually have a longer and better quality GFR quasi-documentary in the works with some excellent footage of their early trio yearsā¦ I do have āRipX DAWā on my Windows partition and it does pretty good stem stuff with clean sources but I donāt know how well it would do with this hot mess, despite the brutal Video I was kind of surprised at the quality of the Audio and how much high end was left. I pulled a LOT of lower mids and midrange out of it and it still sounds pretty harsh but the Audio being mixed a bit hot kind of suits the manic playing, the worst part is Farnerās vocals are mixed too low throughout. That said RipX and the other Stem options are pretty cool but whatever Peter Jackson and Giles Martin get to play with seems infinitely betterā¦
Yeah, Peter Jacksonās MAL software seems untouchable by all the other stem separation options out there. Man would I love to get my hands on that software! I have only ever used the Audacity AI stem separation plugin (openVino) which isnāt terrible but has lots of room for improvement. Probably not usable for pro work.
Having been lucky enough to purchase the 2025 re-release of the Beatles Mono set on vinyl has also been an experience. Dang those records sound fantastic! So freaking punchy too and I love that itās all analog. Ofc I recorded them all to 24/96 while playing them.
especially 15 of them! Also threw out an EchoLab video switcher (digital SD), a Chyron Duet (digital SD) and 7 other 5x5x5 pallets of SD crap. Much of it two Grass Valley 300 switchers and parts. Those things occupied an entire rack, EACH!
.
As a result there is blurring and halos etc. on the VHS source and heavy chroma and macroblock artifacting from terrible MPEG-2 encoding not to mention aliasing artifacts from poor deinterlacing. If this wasnāt an incredible concert and if the original source was obtainable I wouldnāt have bothered trying to polish this turd at all but I love this showā¦ This is probably a pretty realistic demonstration of what can be expected from the worst dumpster-dive compromised Video, obviously results with clean pro-shot sources are much better.