Dynamic decoder configuration for live transcoding

A system comprising:

• a non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon program instructions;
• and
• a processing device coupled to the non-transitory machine-readable medium, wherein when executing the program instructions, the processing device performs operations comprising:
• accessing a frame from a stream of decoded data decoded by a decoder;
• determining that the stream has a second input source format, wherein the second input source format is different from a first input source format of one or more previous frames from the stream;
• identifying that metadata associated with the second input source format required by an encoder of a transcoding pipeline is not present in the frame;
• searching a cache for the metadata associated with the second input source format required by the encoder;
• determining that the metadata required by the encoder cannot be extracted and provided to the encoder;
• and
• responsive to determining that the metadata required by the encoder cannot be extracted and provided to the encoder:
• creating one or more of:
• a synthesizing encoder and a synthesizing decoder, wherein the creating includes providing an input configuration to the one or more of the synthesizing encoder and the synthesizing decoder;
• constructing, using the one or more of the synthesizing encoder and the synthesizing decoder, replacement metadata for the frame, wherein the replacement metadata for the encoder is not located in the cache;
• transmitting the frame and the replacement metadata to the encoder;
• and
• generating, by the encoder, an audio/video output stream in a target media format using the replacement metadata, wherein the target media format unifies the second input source format of the frame and the first input source format of the one or more previous frames to the target media format.

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, if executed by a processor, will cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

• accessing a frame from a stream of decoded data decoded by a decoder;
• determining that the stream has a second input source format, wherein the second input source format is different from a first input source format of one or more previous frames from the stream;
• identifying that metadata associated with the second input source format required by an encoder of a transcoding pipeline is not present in the frame;
• searching a cache for the metadata associated with the second input source format required by the encoder;
• determining that the metadata required by the encoder cannot be extracted and provided to the encoder;
• and
• responsive to determining that the metadata required by the encoder cannot be extracted and provided to the encoder:
• creating one or more of:
• a synthesizing encoder and a synthesizing decoder, wherein the creating includes providing an input configuration to the one or more of the synthesizing encoder and the synthesizing decoder;
• constructing, using the one or more of the synthesizing encoder and the synthesizing decoder, replacement metadata for the frame, wherein the replacement metadata for the encoder is not located in the cache;
• transmitting the frame and the replacement metadata to the encoder;
• and
• generating, by the encoder, an audio/video output stream in a target media format using the replacement metadata, wherein the target media format unifies the second input source format of the frame and the first input source format of the one or more previous frames to the target media format.