Patent ID: 7478166

Claim:
A method of providing transcoded media content to a destination client in response to a publishing service request from a requesting client, comprising the steps of: receiving the publishing service request; given that transcoding capacity is available, generating and sending a media provider request that specifies on-demand transcoding to satisfy exactly the publishing service request; selecting a transcoding server based on server load; identifying a distribution server; initiating, at the selected transcoding server, a transcoding task corresponding to the publishing service request; transcoding source media content to produce requested transcoded media content; sending the requested transcoded media content to the distribution server; sending a distribution request to the distribution server; and delivering the requested transcoded media content from the distribution server to the destination client; and scheduling transcoding tasks, during an off peak period of the transcoding server and before receiving the publishing service request, based on records of previous transcoded media content and storing the transcoded media content in a cache, wherein the scheduling transcoding tasks occur at a slower transcoding speed than that of the on-demand transcoding.