Patent ID: 8621544

Claim:
A method comprising: transmitting a first portion of a video content transmission to a first plurality of video content receivers before at least one additional video content receiver joins a multicast group of the video content transmission, wherein the first plurality of video content receivers does not include the at least one additional video content receiver; receiving, at a video distribution system, a plurality of video quality metrics including one or more video quality metrics from each video content receiver of the first plurality of video content receivers, the one or more video quality metrics associated with artifacts of the first portion of the video content transmission wherein the plurality of video quality metrics is received before the at least one additional video content receiver joins the multicast group of the video content transmission; selecting one or more representative video quality metrics based on analysis of the plurality of video quality metrics, wherein the analysis includes: selecting at least one video quality metric from the plurality of video quality metrics received from each video content receiver of the first plurality of video content receivers; determining whether a value of the at least one video quality metric satisfies a predetermined threshold value; and including the at least one video quality metric in the one or more representative video quality metrics based on determining that the value of the at least one video quality metric satisfies the predetermined threshold value; setting one or more encoder parameters based on the one or more representative video quality metrics; encoding a second portion of the video content transmission using the one or more encoder parameters; encoding the first portion of the video content transmission using one or more previous encoder parameters that are based in part on the plurality of video quality metrics received from each video content receiver of the first plurality of video content receivers, wherein the first portion is encoded for transmission to the at least one additional video content receiver, and wherein the previous encoder parameters are not based on one or more particular video quality metrics received from the at least one additional video content receiver; transmitting, to the at least one additional video content receiver, the first portion of the video content transmission encoded using the one or more previous encoder parameters; and transmitting the encoded second portion to a second plurality of video content receivers.