About Cal Media Engineering
Our mission is to provide innovative and cost-effective audio/video solutions for broadcast and production professionals, together with superior customer support.
Our Story
Founded in 2004 by two engineers: Christopher Gifford and Keith Schindler, they had previously worked together at Schindler Imaging, Inc. developing the first 24-frame playback systems designed from the ground up for the film industry. These units were quickly adopted and utilized extensively in the production of tv series such as The West Wing and Friends, and rented out by a major studio for use on feature films and other shows. Eventually, units were sold to video and computer playback professionals worldwide, where previously, such systems were typically only rented.
California Media Engineering (Cal Media) was later incorporated and became an early member of the openGear® partner program collaborating with Ross Video to provide cost effective A/V Sync and Profanity Delay solutions for the broadcast industry. The Model 5000 AV Delay card was adopted by tv stations nationwide, often used as a simple delay system for switching between live feeds. The Profanity Delay capabilities were also adopted, worldwide, for various content compliance applications.
Prior to Cal Media, Chris was a senior design engineer at Prime Image Inc. There, he pioneered solid-state audio/video delays, standards conversion, and real-time audio and video time compression, earning his first six patents. In 2011, Chris and Keith joined Prime Image to develop a new, updated time compression system (known as the Time Tailor 3500AP) to reduce the program duration of both live HD content as well as file-based programs. Cal Media was ultimately granted exclusive rights for Maintenance and Service of that system. The new system included a means for leasing the costly units based on usage time, with a cryptographic method for allocating additional usage.
Keith has since developed patented blockchain technology for a financial instrument representing rights to usage, while Chris has designed and developed advanced versions of Cal Media's flagship products: the Model 5100 AV Delay Card, and the MVPHD-24 Video Playback Converter. Currently they are collaborating with IndieToken LLC, a member of the Google Cloud Startup program, on innovative cloud, AI, and blockchain technologies.
