Method for synchronizing GOPs and IDR-frames on multiple encoders without communication

A content distribution system, comprising:

• an encoder at a headend comprising a processor and computer instructions stored in a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, wherein the processor is configured to execute the instructions to cause the encoder to:
• decode a source video content stream into a sequence of uncompressed frames, where each frame in the sequence is marked with an associated presentation time stamp (PTS) clock value;
• calculate a number of clock cycles between instantaneous decoder refresh (IDR)-frames;
• for each frame in the sequence, calculate a remainder after a division of an associated PTS clock value of a given frame by the number of clock cycles between IDR-frames;
• mark each frame in the sequence as an IDR-frame where the corresponding remainder is strictly less than a number of PTS clock cycles per frame and mark a remainder of the frames in the sequence as an internal frame within a group of pictures (GOP) to produce a marked set of video frames;
• discard frames in the sequence prior to a first IDR-frame in the marked set of video frames;
• and
• pass the marked set video frames through a video codec to output an output video content stream, wherein the output video content stream has IDR-frames at the same locations as a second output video content stream of a second encoder.