US Patent 11665218 Fast encoding of live streaming media content

Techniques and mechanisms described herein facilitate the management of virtual encoding format converters for live media content streams. A media content system may employ potentially many converters to encode potentially many live video streams. When supporting many live video streams, there may be some streams that are not being viewed by anyone at a particular time. In some such situations, a virtual encoding format converter encoding a live media content stream that is not being viewed may be disabled. Then, live video content associated with the live video stream may be stored in a buffer and updated as new live video content is received. When a user transmits a request to view a stream for which the encoder has been disabled, an format converters for the requested video stream may be enabled. The buffered data may be used to quickly initialize the encoder.