Abstract: The invention provides a high-capacity transcoding station for concurrently transcoding multiple signal streams received from designated multimedia sources. The transcoding station employs a pool of heterogenous processing units of different types, referenced as “workers”, a pool of resources communicatively coupled to the pool of workers, and an orchestrator configured to communicate with the pool of workers and communicate with the multimedia sources through a network interface. The network interface receives transcoding requests and signal streams to be transcoded, directs control data components of the transcoding requests from different multimedia sources to the orchestrator and directs content data of the signal streams to the pool of workers. The content data is organized into groups of pictures (GOPs) and each worker is configured to process one GOP at a time. The GOPs are treated as independent entities, regardless of their stream affiliations. A worker may process a GOP belonging to any stream.

Abstract: A versatile high-throughput multimedia transcoding station, serving a plurality of multimedia sources, employs transcoding resources including a pool of decoders, a pool of signal-adaptors, and a pool of encoders operating concurrently to realize low-latency transcoding of high-flow-rate multimedia streams. A multimedia stream contains a video stream organized into source groups-of-pictures (GOPs). Upon receiving a transcoding request indicating characteristics of a source multimedia stream and desired characteristics of a destination multimedia stream, an orchestrator rapidly allocates a resource for each GOP and coordinates activation of a content-processing assembly which encompasses the transcoding resources and means for distributing each GOP to compatible resources. The orchestrator assembly monitors progress of GOPs' processing and, when needed under high workload fluctuation, instructs a multimedia source to pause transmission.