Client News

London, UK, 27 July 2020: Trams Ltd, a leading value-added reseller and IT solutions provider, is proud to celebrate its 30th Anniversary this month. Established in 1990, Trams is a well-respected and proven supplier to a variety of blue-chip organisations across the media & entertainment, finance, education, oil, gas and energy sectors.

“Trams has been the perfect partner for us in terms of supplying the services we ask of them. From hardware/software to cloud services, we have been extremely happy with the Trams performance and feel very well looked after. We look forward to working together for many years to come! Keep up the good work!” – SkyBet.

Becoming an Apple Authorised Reseller in 1993, Trams continued to establish accreditations from a wide range of manufacturers including Dell, Cisco, Quantum, HPe, Lenovo, Jamf and many more.

Warren Peel, Managing Director, Trams Ltd said, “Our reputation and performance has been built on our clients’ confidence in Trams’ dedicated and experienced colleagues, together with strong and lasting relationships with our manufacturer partners. Without our valued staff and clients, this 30-year milestone would not have been possible. We would like to extend our thanks to all who have supported us throughout the last three decades.”

“Trams has always demonstrated the highest competencies in front of our most demanding media and entertainment customers, served by an amazing team of skilled and committed professionals,” explained Anniek Snauwaert, Sales Director, EMEA M&E of Quantum. She concluded, “Happy Anniversary Trams, the entire Quantum team is excited to help as a vendor of choice during the next 30 years of growth.”

Having received numerous awards for IT services across B2B and the education sector, Trams continues to deliver its award-winning service. “Despite the challenges of Covid-19, Trams is committed to working closely with its customers to ensure delivery of reliable, IT solutions making the financial, logistical and technological challenges of a “work anywhere” workforce, possible,” concluded Peel.

For more information on Trams Ltd, visit www.trams.co.uk/about/30th-anniversary

Aldermaston, UK, 29 July 2020: Having completed a number of projects in recent months despite the constraints of the global pandemic, SI Media and GB Labs reflect on the underrated value provided by global and regional partnerships.

Based just north of Venice, Italy, SI Media is an international broadcast software solution provider – including its proprietary “.YES!”, an HTML5 web-based and cloud-oriented suite for media asset, broadcast management, newsroom computer, and playout automation system for master control rooms and studios.

Dominic Harland, CEO/CTO GB Labs said, “Because so many of SI Media’s customers already use our storage, our systems have now become an integral part of what they recommend as part of their workflow and production solutions to new and existing customers - and one of the installations we have just completed together in Asia was for a new online and nearline archive for master control and production workflows using our FastNAS storage system.”

GB Labs provides the world’s most intelligent NAS shared storage technology, wrapped in simple to use yet ultra-powerful appliances designed specifically for media professionals. GB Labs pioneered NAS technology more than a decade ago, and continues to advance its capabilities - in-house – daily.

GB Labs’ storage products are stable, reliable, and scalable in ways that fit elegantly with any modern requirement. It can be used for both MCR and production workflows, which for a software orientated house such as SI Media is a key element in providing a complete technology solution.

SI Media EMEA Sales Manager, Paolo Favaro further explained, “With the current restrictions on site visits and other practical uncertainties, it’s a major bonus to have a technology partner and hardware supplier you can count on in any scenario. Moreover, the speed with which we receive support for a proposal, and the expertise with which it is delivered, is remarkable.

“Adding GB Labs storage to our recommended portfolio has brought several benefits to our project proposals: It expands our influence on the projects; it increases our overall value; and it enables us to set up and test a complete workflow in our laboratories, minimising wastes of time and risk. It also provides the stability of using the same provider and the certainty of the reliability of the proposed system. A partner with the quality of technology provided by GB Labs enables us to expand what we offer to our clients and minimise the time typically required to build and deliver a system to a specific request.”

Harland concluded, “The importance of mutual trust and respect - especially during difficult circumstances – cannot be overstated. Providing partners with high-quality products and the highest standards of support during normal operating conditions is a core value for any successful business, but it really pays dividends when the going gets tough. We are delighted to have contributed to the ongoing success of SI Media and look forward to many more projects to come.”

London, UK, 16 July 2020: Mo-Sys, a world leader in precision camera tracking solutions for virtual studios and augmented reality, has brought virtual studio production within reach of everyone with StarTracker Studio, the world’s first pre-assembled production package. The system is scalable to any size production, and can support 4K Ultra HD.

Critical for virtual studio and augmented reality production is to track the position of each camera in three-dimensional space across all six axes of movement. StarTracker from Mo-Sys is proven as the most precise and reliable camera tracking package, using dots on the studio ceiling (“stars”) which are placed at random and tracked to plot camera positions with extraordinary accuracy.

To make virtual studio production accessible by all, StarTracker Studio bundles the tracking with cameras and mounts and a high-performance virtual graphics system based on the latest version of the Unreal Engine and the Ultimatte keyer. Mo-Sys’s unique plug-in interfaces directly between the camera tracking and the Unreal Engine, for extreme precision with virtually no latency.

All the hardware – including Lenovo PCs with Titan RTX GPUs – is mounted in a rolling rack cabinet and pre-wired, and all the software is loaded and configured. All the user has to do is design their unique virtual environment, power up the StarTracker Studio rack and start shooting.

“StarTracker Studio enables any organisation to create premium virtual studio content easily and simply, at an attractive price point,” said Michael Geissler, CEO of Mo-Sys. “We have made it simple by bringing the best equipment together, from respected vendors like Blackmagic Design/Ultimatte, Lenovo, Canon and Cartoni.

“That hardware works with the incredible virtual graphics power from the Unreal Engine, tied with perfect precision to real objects thanks to Mo-Sys tracking,” he continued. “It gives the user access to top end effects like hyper-realistic reflections, soft shadows to emulate real-world lighting, continual depth of field processing to emulate lens performance, and occlusion handling, so talent can walk around virtual objects. In other words, top-end, uncompromised virtual production, in a simple one-stop package.”

The standard package is supplied with three Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K cameras with Canon 18 – 80 zoom lenses, and paired with Mo-Sys StarTracker tracking units. The kit also includes a camera jib, a rolling tripod and a camera rail set. An 8 channel Atem production switcher provides the live output for broadcast or streaming, and three video recorders are included for separate programme, key and graphics recording. Smart switching means that only one Ultimatte keyer is required for the system, rather than the more conventional one keyer per camera.

The package also includes the Mo-Sys Beam In kit to bring remote guests into the virtual studio. Every element can be used in HD or 4K Ultra HD. Three radio microphones and an eight-channel audio mixer are also part of the solution.The system is scalable up to the largest size of virtual production. Rack kits are available to support either eight or 16 cameras. The complete system is pre-configured by Mo-Sys before shipping, and Mo-Sys will also provide all support, including training in technical and creative aspects where required.

“We have all had to find new and inventive ways to keep up production over the last few months,” said Geissler. “StarTracker Studio is ideal for the new normal, especially including our Beam In kit for remote contributions. This is a powerful production platform aimed at anyone who wants to create virtual studio and augmented reality content, without the time and investment setting it up themselves. Hang a green screen and, with StarTracker Studio, you are good to go.”

Additional information will be available through a Webinar on 23July 2020 at 10am BST and 6pm BST.

Aldermaston, UK, 14 July 2020: The leader in intelligent storage solutions, GB Labs has announced that its proprietary CORE.4 and CORE.4 Lite operating systems have been upgraded with additional security benefits designed to augment existing performance, analytic, and real-time data monitoring and display features.

GB Labs’ Chief Product Officer, Howard Twine said, “We have been anything but idle in recent months and have used our time to further improve our already market-leading storage system OS with a range of security enhancements.

“Some of what we have done will mean little to the casual observer, but to everyday users, we have again practically reinvented what is possible to do with a well-designed storage system.”

Twine said, “Security has always been crucial for protecting valuable assets, and with increasing numbers of people moving files around from a variety of remote locations - including home - and between various platforms, we knew it was important to revisit our operating systems to exploit or improve every aspect of their protective environment.”

The CORE.4 UI has been improved with a range of auditing features, both historical and real-time. Data columns can be sorted to indicate how users have interacted with files as well as the type of protocol; login confirmation; shutdown and restart; file transfer status and location details; in addition to report creation and delivery tools. The real-time data is displayed in a timeline along with a pie chart that includes protocol data, all of which can be viewed for detailed analysis of precisely what’s taking place with the data at any time.

“It is, of course, common to monitor a system and resolve security problems after the fact, using accumulated data, but what isn’t common is our ability to automatically monitor a system’s data - live - and flag up anything extraordinary. This is highly valuable in showing how people interact with a system and in identifying where any bottlenecks may be, unnecessary downtime is being wasted, or further efficiencies may be found. All of these tools are useful in helping an organisation achieve its aspirations.”

Twine added, “The in-built System Security Analyser in CORE.4 and CORE.4 Lite is a tool that actively looks for potential security issues and, if detected, makes appropriate recommendations.

The upgraded CORE.4 OS with advanced security is currently being rolled out to existing GB Labs storage system users and will be available in all new systems from August 2020.