Combine the power of multiple Macs

If you’re like me, then you have several systems because of how affordable PowerPC Macs are these days.  The issue many PowerPC users have in 2012 is not having enough power to do something with heavy CPU use, and still be able to multitask effectively.  These CPU hungry tasks could be anything from a script heavy site to playing video, and it's nice to be able to do other things without holding back something that needs to use a good chunk of the resources.

It’s nice to be able to browse the web or do whatever while you wait for some heavy lifting to finish up.  Whether you have a G3 or a Quad G5; having spare CPU cycles at your disposal is what will really make any computing experience all it can be.  If you have another system you can use it to take excess load and tasks off your main system. 

The easiest way to do this is with two screens, but one is enough thanks to VNC/Remote Desktop technology.  I use a combination of two screens and the built in “ScreenSharing” app in Leopard, and I do this on a daily basis with my two main Sawtooth systems.  This allows me to offload anything I want onto my 1.0 GHz system, which keeps my 1.8 GHz open for business. 

In certain ways, the VNC option is actually more efficient because it keeps everything on one screen while still offloading work to other systems.  The ScreenSharing window gives you a Mac within a Mac; somewhat similar to virtualization, but better.  What makes this method better is the other OS isn’t running on the same computer like it is in a virtual machine, so the two are not slowing each other down besides a tiny bit of resources to keep drawing the remote window.


Methods

Rather than tell you how you should do things, I will explain my methods; which can then inspire you to shape these concepts to your own personal needs.  The ideology is to spread load over systems that are not clustered, and therefore not limited to cluster software. 

An average computing session for me starts with checking my email, which is run on my secondary Sawtooth.  I keep it on a desk which is close to my main system.  Although it has it’s own LCD, I normally prefer to access it through ScreenSharing.  The main thinking behind this is that all the tasks I run on the 1.0 GHz are background 24/7 type things, and none of them need a lot of attention.

The things I run on it are:

• Apple Mail
• Transmission (bit torrent)
• Disk Drill (data recovery and SMART utility)
• iCal
• MS Word
• Noise (white/pink noise utility)
• iTunes (music server)
• Stickies
• Alarm Clock
• Meteorologist
• Frogblast (intranet client)
• HandBrake
• Media Converter
• Occasional web browsing

When not using the system via the attached 24” LCD (which is most of the time), I keep the second Sawtooth at 1024x768, which doesn’t take up too much room as a remote window.  None of the apps listed above really need higher than 1024x768, and that size window fits well into 1920x1200, while not hogging too much space.  I use command + tab rather than the dock to get to the app I want.  I also run Quicksilver on the remote system.

With all those things running on the 1.0 GHz, it allows my 1.8 GHz to be devoted to whatever I am actively doing.  I generally leave it for video playback, and web; along with the daily image editing I do in Pixelmator.  If I am watching 1080p in CorePlayer, it will use most of the CPU, so this is an occasion where anything else I want to do is done in the remote window.  If I am watching 720p or higher I use the remote window to browse the web, so it doesn’t hold back the 1.8 GHz.  If I am watching 600p or lower video, then my main system can play that fine while I browse without dropping frames.

Think of it as balancing load over multiple systems with your tasks and computing habits rather than within the code.  The remote window within a preexisting system can give you an immense ability beyond what just one can do.  As I mentioned already, the only resources the remote window uses are a very small bit of CPU and GPU to draw the window contents.  ScreenSharing never uses more than 3-4% CPU on my 1.8 GHz, and less than 2% most of the time.

Having gigabit ethernet really helps a lot, but I have gotten by fine on 100BT and .11b wifi in the past.  The advantage of gigabit is that the flow of the remote window will be much smoother. 


Not on Leopard?

If you're running Tiger then you don’t have the built in ScreenSharing app, and will need a third party alternative.  When I’m running Tiger I prefer an app called “Chicken” which is a side project from “Chicken of the VNC”.  Chicken is better, and was last updated in 2011, but Chicken of the VNC is the only 10.3 Panther option from these developers.  It has not been updated since 2006. 

I use Chicken myself when I have my Storm Trooper B&W G3 running (10.4.11), and I use it to control the 1.0 GHz Sawtooth running Leopard just as I normally would from my 1.8 GHz.


Closing thoughts

I have done this on and off for a long time now, but for the last three or more years I do this 100% of the time, and find it very productive.  Two single CPU systems working together is the ultimate dual CPU setup; since what you do on one doesn’t hold the other back.  No matter how powerful one computer is, you still cannot avoid slowing it down with every task you add to its resources. I normally just do this with two systems, but there is no limit to how many Macs you can use this way.  If the other system is in another room, then VNC is the perfect way to utilize it.



Software:
Chicken (10.4.11+) – Chicken of the VNC (10.3.9+)

Video on PowerPC: Part 3 - Ripping

Having things just the way you want them is a rare thing in life.  Video ripping is one of those rare have it just the way you want things.  The only limitations are in the software you rip with, and the capability of the hardware the video is intended to be played on.  The software you will use for playback should also be taken into consideration so that what you rip will play flawlessly.

In my opinion, there are two PowerPC compatible apps on OS X  worthy of keeping in your ripping toolbox; Handbrake and Media Converter.  The Handbrake team ceased PowerPC development during the 0.9.4 - 0.9.5 transition, but Media Converter continues to have G4/G5 support.  Both are very capable, and allow fine tuning of rips beyond what anyone would ever really need.  Many will find Media Converter a little more user friendly, because once you have all the presets fine tuned just the way you want it’s simply a matter of drag and drop.  Handbrake is a bit more high maintenance in terms of usability, but it’s more capable in terms of video filters like deblocking and deinterlacing. 

In regard to audio, both have different strengths.  Media Converter has a wider codec range, while Handbrake is better at properly dealing with audio channels.  You obviously need to setup how you deal with audio channels based on the audio setup your playback hardware has.  These normally range from 2:1 to 5:1, so be sure you set things according to your needs.  Once you find your preferred settings in either app, make a preset so that you only have to do that fine tune once. 

Versions to use

With Handbrake you shouldn't go past version 0.9.3 on Leopard, because 0.9.4 and up drop XviD codec and avi wrapper support so they are not nearly as flexible.  0.9.3 was the last build to still offer full FFmpeg and XviD (avi) options alongside h.264.  It also is much more MP3 and AC3 friendly.  Tiger users cannot go past 0.9.1, which is a very solid build also.

For Media Converter, just use the most recent build or any version you tend to prefer.  I use the current 1.2 version, and other than a few small tweaks I needed to make, the built in presets are quite good out of the box.  Once it’s all setup the way you want, all you have to do is open it and drag whatever you have to rip onto the window.  Easy as pie.  Not that I can bake a pie, but that’s beside the point.

A practical approach, and the hardware in question

No matter if you're ripping DVD's or re-ripping compressed video, there is a sweet spot for all G4 and G5 hardware.  Anyone on a slower G4, with the will and patience to watch something their hardware can't handle, can down-rip videos to a codec and resolution more fitting their hardware playback capability.

Before doing any large quantity of ripping, it’s best to first figure out the codec/resolution sweet spots for your playback hardware.   As noted in the playback articles, you need to work within the capability of your hardware.  It would be quite a waste to spend days, or even weeks, ripping stuff that won’t even play well on your Mac. 

In terms of what hardware is suitable for ripping, it would be wise to only use G4/G5 on OS X.  A G3 could take over a week to rip what a slower G4 could rip in a day or two.  Just as with playback, Altivec has a big part in the performance of ripping.  It’s just the kind of operation that Altivec excels at, as well as L3 cache.  I use my secondary Sawtooth to do all my ripping, and it’s equipped with a G4 1.0 GHz 7455B which has 2 MB DDR L3 and it rips video at least 10-20% faster than the G4 1.25 GHz 7447A in my old PowerPC mini did.  There are many tasks a computer does that L3 doesn’t help at all with, but anything that deals with heavy lifting a large file is where it really earns it’s keep on the CPU card.

The G4’s which will struggle most with ripping are actually more in the mid range in regard to clock speed.  The early eMacs and iMac G4 are somewhat crippled with a 7450 chip that has only 256 KB L2, and no L3.

A laptop is not the best piece of hardware to use because they are simply not built for running at 100% CPU consumption for the hours, or even days, it takes to rip a big que of video.  Towers can do this with ease for months/years if needed.  If all you have is a portable, then simply use it in moderation for ripping for it's own sake, but a nice cheap dual 450-500 MHz Gigabit G4 would do an admirable job for well under $100, and could also be used for file serving, torrents or whatever else you think of.

Ripping quality and time

Once you know the codec and resolution sweet spots for your hardware, the thing to consider with each thing you rip is what bitrate is the best all round for the video and audio.  Things like animation can get by with a low video bitrate, and video with a large amount of dialogue can get by with lower audio quality. 

If your hardware deals with h.264 playback well enough, then you can get by with lower bitrates because it’s inherently less blocky than DivX.  It also takes 2-3x longer to rip, and 60%+ more CPU to playback.  My fastest hardware is my 1.8 GHz Sawtooth, which can rip DivX (FFmpeg) faster than real time, vs. about 2x real time on h.264.

I have ripped h.264 animation as low as 300kb video and 64kb audio, which actually looked very good considering.  The key was keeping a decent resolution such as 480p or higher.  This ripped in real time or faster, and the video only used about 150 MB per hour.  Keep in mind that this low quality would look horrible with anything but animation, or if I used DivX rather than h.264.

For typical video like films or television shows, h.264 can be kept under 1000kb/sec and look amazing.  The 700-1000 kb range is perfect all round for quality and low file sizes. 

With DivX/XviD the advantages are many.  They rip faster, play back with less CPU and there are a few great tricks to make up for the slight increase in blocks and artifacts.  I encode all my DivX/XviD to be at least 400-600p, which when combined with using the deblocking filter and 1000-1500 kb makes for very nice looking video.  I use either MP3 or AAC audio at 128 kb minimum which I push to 160-256 kb for video that has a lot of music in it.  You can go as low as 64 kb for pure dialogue content, but I only do that with animation. 

People with G4’s under 1.0 GHz would be wise to stick with the FFmpeg option in Handbrake.  It rips the fastest and looks almost as good as XviD, which takes about 30% longer to rip.  FFmpeg in Handbrake is DX50 (DivX 5), and I am a big fan of it.  It’s not only the fastest codec in Hanbrake, but it also performs better than Media Converter's DivX preset, even after several attempts to make it faster.  Handbrake also allows you to put an iOS compatible mp4/m4v wrapper on FFmpeg, which brings DivX efficiency to iPod/iPad/iPhone.

The moral of the quality story is that it’s a combination of hardware playback capability and personal preference.  Find your own niche that makes both you and your hardware happy, and stick to it. 

The best setting ranges for different hardware

G4 single 350–933 MHz

DivX:  200–500p (vertical pixels) @ 800-1500 kb/sec with 64 – 256 kb audio

h.264: 180–360p @ 500-1000 kb/sec with 64 – 256 kb audio

G4 single 1.0 GHz+ - Any dual G4 - Single G5

DivX: 400–720p @ 800-1500 kb/sec with 128 – 256 kb audio

h.264: 360–600p @ 800-1200 kb/sec with 128 – 256 kb audio

Dual/Quad G5

DivX:  720-1080p @ 1200-2000 kb/sec with 128 – 256 kb audio

h.264:  600–1080p @ 1200-1500 kb/sec with 128 – 256 kb audio

As I already mentioned, you need to find your own niche in the video settings, but the above guidelines reflect good overall results.  They are all based on leaving some CPU free for other tasks when playing these rips back.  If you want to go a bit higher then feel it out and see how it goes.  Trial and error is a great way to learn. 

Software

HandBrake

Tiger (0.9.1) - Leopard (0.9.3)

Media Converter 1.2 (10.4.11 or higher)

32-bit - 64-bit - Presets

Why the Sawtooth is the greatest Mac ever made

Many people have their favorite Mac and for several different reasons.  A lot of people in the Mac world tend to put aesthetics before function and expandability, by choosing impractical but pretty computers.  The Cube, and any iMac from the G4 model on are perfect examples of this.  To be fair, I do have a natural bias against any all in one computers, but at least the iMac G3's didn't sacrifice hardware health for the sake of design.  The form before function thing is a big part of the Mac culture; one I have never been able to relate to and never will. 

When I look at what makes a perfect computer, I look at reliability and expandability before anything else.  Expandability means tower and the Power Macs Apple made in the 1997 - 2002 (8600 - Quicksilver) era are the most reliable computers Apple ever made.  Within this elite group of hardware the Sawtooth has the greatest track record of them all in both personal experience and Apple service records.  The first revision of the Sawtooth only had a 1.6 % failure rate and the Uni-N 7 revision of the tower was under 1 %.  These numbers are very impressive on their own, but they seem even better when you look at MDD's or G5's.  MDD's had a 6-11 % failure rate depending on model, and the first dual 2 GHz G5 has a shockingly high failure rate of around 30 %.  The liquid cooled models are just as bad if not worse.  People can chase after higher specs all they want, but what good is it when it stops running? 

I actually switched from computing with 2x MDD (dual 867 and 1.42) to 2x Sawtooth in 2009.  The dual 867 was decently reliable, but the dual 1.42 had some real issues with stability on every OS I ever ran on it.  Then there is the G5 systems, which I feel are about the worst thing that ever happened to the PowerPC architecture, but I will get into that more in the future.

When most hear about my switching from the MDD to the Sawtooth they ask things like "why would you do that?".  The answer is reliability combined with the G4 7448 CPU.  I need reliability first and foremost, and I also had a strong desire to acquire a 7448 chip.  The MDD's fail me on both these needs, because they are not nearly as reliable as other G4's, and they cannot take any of the 7448 upgrades since they are all only compatible from the Sawtooth through to the Quicksilver.

The Sawtooth are not only the most reliable Power Mac, but also one of the cheapest to buy of all the AGP equipped models. I see them these days for 40-80. Cheap enough that I have 5 total and plan to buy another few for a cluster I plan on building.  8+ systems is the sweet spot for G4 clusters, and I still want a few spares if the day comes that I need parts.  I have built clusters for other people for years now, but this will be the first one I have ever built for myself.  I am even at the point now of writing some of my own cluster software.   


Breaking down the other G4 towers

MDD's are by far the most unreliable of all the G4 towers.  Many people are understandably enticed by the stock specs since they are the highest of all the towers.  If someone needs to get the best bang for their buck, and good performance without CPU upgrades, a dual 1.0 GHz Quicksilver might be the best choice for the long run.

The Gigabit Ethernet model has the same 2 GB RAM capacity as the Sawtooth vs the 1.5 GB limit in the Digital Audio and Quicksilver. Over the years though I have noticed the Gigagbit PSU's are not quite as reliable as the Sawtooth are. I would prefer the onboard gigabit vs the gigabit PCI card I have to use but the PSU tradeoff made the choice for me.



The Digital Audio and Quicksilver are both very reliable towers, but in my experiences the extra 512 MB RAM the Sawtooth allows is more of an overall system benefit than the 33MHz faster bus and AGP 4x vs 2x. OS X loves RAM as we all know, so the 33 % extra memory capacity and better PSU is why I chose the Sawtooth to base all, or at least most, of the computing I do.  I have one Gigabit Ethernet system.

The Yikes (PCI Graphics) is one to avoid unless you get it for a steal.  There is nothing unreliable about it, but it shares the same logic board with the rev. 2 B&W G3, and has a very slow memory controller compared to the AGP models with the same 100 MHz bus speed.  Sawtooth's can be found for the same price or just a few bucks more and will perform noticeably better with the same CPU speed.  The memory performs up to 3x faster, with a Yikes clocking in at only 180-250 MB/sec vs 500-800 MB/sec in a Sawtooth.  Very impressive for the same bus speed which points to how important a good memory controller is. 


The final word

Everyone has their own prerequisites for what makes a perfect computer but longevity, reliability and expandability are qualities that virtually anyone can get on board with.  The Sawtooth meets all these needs and then some.  They may be 12 years old now but when used by the right people they can still be extremely capable in the modern world.

Video on PowerPC: Part 2 - Playback on G3

The recent news of the new Mars rover being powered by a 200 MHz G3 is making some reevaluate their perception of the G3's ability.  The early G4 chips are fundamentally just a G3 with an added Altivec unit.  The final Power Mac G3 and the first G4 tower even share the same logic board and CPU socket.  In terms of video playback though, the lack of Altivec is a big hit on performance, but there is still lots you can do with the right codecs and software. 

I started out watching and collecting compressed digital video on a regular basis in 2002.  This was in the late OS X 10.1 days.  Then in August that year when 10.2 was released a big swarm of BSD and Linux software started getting ported over, thanks to the BSD based kernel.  As I mention in my previous video article for G4/G5, it was this mid-late 2002 era when digital video playback really took off on the Mac.  The classic and early OS X days were limited to half a handful of very sloppy, didn't work more than they did, DivX based QT codecs. 

The hardware I had in 2002 when I really got into DivX was a B&W G3 350 MHz with 256MB memory, and running 10.2 with an early Mplayer OSX build.  It wasn't really till around 2004 that h.264 became more common, but DivX based codec are still common today even though h.264 has slightly surpassed it in terms of user numbers.  A G3 cannot really cope with h.264 until you get to at least 700 MHz, but even then it drops frames.  DivX, XviD and DVD are your best options for successful playback on more modest G3 chips. 

Your best friend with DivX/XviD and the like will be Mplayer (1.1 from 2002), because newer versions of it don’t like G3 CPU’s.  This is because they rely heavily on Altivec.  The same goes with versions of VLC past 0.5.3.  To be fair, the versions that don’t run well (if at all) on G3 are from 2004 on, which is 5+ years after the G4 was introduced.  The lack of Altivec is a hindrance on video playback, but I will now move on to the tools that will help you get all the video goodness you can out of your G3.


The Software (OS X 10.2 – 10.4)


Mplayer OSX 1.1 – Download

For best results open preferences and check the drop frames option, and also turn on cache.  The drop frames option sounds bad, but it will make choppy video look quite smooth by dropping 2-5 frames a second in an orderly fashion so the end result is smooth.  This exact version may be the second most efficient playback app ever made on Mac OS after CorePlayer.


VLC 0.5.3 – Download

As I noted already, the newer versions don’t work so well on G3 in my experiences, but your mileage may vary.  You may also want to try some of the 0.6.x and 0.7.x builds, but don’t expect much better than 0.5.3.  The archive of old versions is found here.


Apple DVD Player

Mplayer and VLC can play DVD also, but not as well (or with as little CPU) as Apple DVD Player can.  DVD playback is something G3’s have done well for a long time, and will keep doing as long as they are still around to use.

It needs to be noted that early G3's like the beige desktop and tray load iMacs do not have DVD playback capability because they lack DVD decoding.  On a beige tower/desktop you can upgrade the video to a late model Rage 128, or any compatible GPU with DVD decoding.  The rev.1 B&W G3 had a special piggybacked  decoder on the graphics card, but only on the DVD model of the tower.  Later revisions of the Rage 128 had DVD decoding built in. 

Any slot load iMac or white iBook with a DVD drive can play DVD.  Any G3 tower with a DVD drive and a 100 MHz Rage 128 (vs the 75 MHz orig.) or better GPU can also play them. 


Closing Comments

When it really comes down to it, any computer is only as capable as the ability and imagination of the user.  A G3 still has many capabilities if you use it with the right software and computing habits.  I encourage everyone who owns a G3 still, and loves video to try my methods and the tools mentioned here.  Let your G3 show you what it can really do.  It may surprise you. 

'Quick' efficiency

In 2004 I discovered what could easily be considered the greatest app launcher ever created on the Mac, but it's much more than just an app launcher.  I am of course referring to Quicksilver.  This has been the very first thing I put in the apps folder after a fresh OS X install ever since.  I love how it allows me to all but ignore my dock and not only live without spotlight, but evolve past it.

Quicksilver can and will completely revolutionize the way you think of your apps, files and bookmarks and really all the contents of your drive.  Rather than wasting time looking for what I want in the dock or anywhere else, I just tap F6 (you can set it to almost any key) which brings up the bezel and I then type the first 1-2 letters of whatever I'm after.  That may sound odd to some, but once you get used to it, and learn how unlimited and customizable it is, your computer use and data access will be on a much more cerebral level.

Aside from the massive amount of efficiency this gives my daily computing, it has also given me a much better mental image of my files after using it all these 8 years now.  Having BSD roots back to 1986, I am happy to type rather than use the mouse.  I am very much the only use the mouse when really needed type.

The shocking thing is that after all these years of Quicksilver being around, there are still many people that have never used it, or even heard of it.  I think this is at least partly to blame on the bloated dock syndrome so many suffer from on Mac OS X.  This is part of that dock aesthetic Apple started in OS X.  I personally think the dock is next to useless.  It's kept hidden, and only contains apps that are running, and a rare minimized window, but I normally prefer just hiding whole apps to get them out of my way visually.

So for those of you willing to relearn how you get at your stuff within the OS, I encourage you to give it a try.  I can't tell you exactly what it will do for you, because thats actually up to you.  It learns from your personal use of it, and what things with similar names you open up more, so that after just 2 -3 uses it has already leaned many things from you.


Download:
Leopard/Tiger - Panther

Other Links:
Homepage - Plugins

Leopard performance on sub-867 MHz G4 hardware

I use one of my spare 400 MHz Sawtooth for testing things on occasion, and a few nights ago I was installing Leopard and testing performance.  I went the more direct route to shoehorning it on by putting the drive in my 1.8GHz and installing it that way.  I then put the drive in the 400 MHz again and it booted perfectly into a fully updated 10.5.8 install.  No need to mess with firmware.

The performance was quite shockingly good to my delight.  I opened Camino and Aurora with 4-5 tabs each then played 480p XviD in VLC 1.1.12, and had about 9% CPU to spare and no real system lag.  After testing VLC playback I fired up MacTubes and was able to play the SD h.264 feeds perfectly smooth at approx. 81-82% CPU consumption.  If you download the files with MacTubes, and play with VLC, or even play the feed in VLC; you can get away with even less CPU power, which makes a G4 350 MHz (AGP) a possibility to watch youtube with no frame drops.  To be fair, the test system I'm using has 2GB RAM and an extra Geforce 6200 I have which supports every GUI/GPU feature in Leopard so those alone would help on any CPU.

This is even more proof that having a GPU with Core Image and Core Animation support is really what makes good Leopard performance.  Without GPU hardware support for those built in can't turn off features in 10.5 you have to pay a CPU tax of up to 34%.  This is because without CI/CA the OS uses the CPU to emulate the GPU.  So anyone not running a Geforce 5200 or higher or a Radeon 9500 or higher under Leopard is literally slowing their CPU down as much as 34% and about 23% on average.  The only way to actually disable all the GPU/GUI features in 10.5 that I have found is to have a tower and remove the video card.  That means you can only remote into it. 

The moral of the story is you're better off running Tiger if you have an unsupported GPU since it doesn't force the GPU features on the OS and CPU unless there is proper hardware support.  If you do have GPU support then your 10.5 performance should be just as good, if not better.  My two daily use Sawtooth both perform slightly better in all aspects on 10.5 and much better in OpenGL related code.  A fully capable GPU is literally like an extra CPU in Leopard.  In Tiger it's more of a slight benefit. 

It's all about having the right hardware in the right places for the OS you run.  The performance is amazing considering it's less than half the minimum CPU spec.


Test system specs:
Sawtooth
G4 400 MHz 7400 w/1MB 2:1 L2
2 GB Memory
27 GB PATA HD
Geforce 6200 256 MB AGP
Leopard (10.5.8)