US Patent 7843824 Method and apparatus for statistically multiplexing services

One aspect of the invention relates to statistically multiplexing first services and second services in a group. A measure of required bandwidth for the first services is obtained, where the first services comprise pre-encoded services. An available encoding bandwidth for the second services is determined from a group bandwidth for the first and second services using the measure of required bandwidth. An encoding bit rate is allocated to each of the second services based on the available encoding bandwidth. Each of the second services is encoded in accordance with the encoding bit rate thereof. One or more services of the first services and the second services are transcoded and a multiplex is formed. Since the available encoding bandwidth for the second services is determined using the measure of required bandwidth for the first services, transcoding of the second services is minimized, and video quality is maximized.