Patent ID: 8782285

Claim:
A method of managing resources dedicated to a content object in a content delivery network, comprising: receiving the content object in an original format from a content provider; transcoding the content object into one or more delivery formats, the one or more delivery formats being less than a full set of delivery formats into which the content delivery network is capable of transcoding; storing the content object, transcoded into the one or more delivery formats, as transcoded copies of the content object; creating a transcoding profile associated with the content object, the transcoding profile specifying at least the one or more delivery formats, and including at least an existence record and a last access time record of the transcoded copies; receiving a request from an end user for the content object; and when the request for the content object is for one of the one or more delivery formats: delivering the corresponding transcoded copy of the content object to the one of the end users, and updating the last access time record of the transcoded copy in the transcoding profile associated with the content object; when the request for the content object is for a different format that is one of the full set of delivery formats, but is not one of the one or more delivery formats: transcoding the content object into the different format to form a first additional transcoded copy of the content object; storing the content object, transcoded into the different format, as the first additional transcoded copy; updating the transcoding profile associated with the content object to include a record of existence and last access time of the first additional transcoded copy; and delivering the first additional transcoded copy to the one of the end users.