CONTENT ADAPTIVE ENCODING

The described technology is generally directed towards developing an adaptive bitrate stack (ladder) on a per-title basis. Variable bitrate encodings are used to obtain complexity information for a title and per-frames scores for the encodings; another encoding provides scene data. The complexity information is analyzed and processed based on the scene data to determine scene-based (e.g., objective and/or subjective quality) scores, which are used to determine scores for the encodings. The results are used to derive a candidate stack, comprising various resolutions and bitrates that provide desirable results. The candidate stack is evaluated by encoding the title using the candidate stack. These encodings are evaluated to select one resolution from any duplicate resolutions for a bitrate (e.g., based on relative quality), resulting in a pruned, final ladder that is associated with the title as the adaptive bitrate stack to be used for streaming that title's content.