Live media streams variants are encoded in real-time in a dynamically scalable distributed resource system. In some examples, each live MPEG-2 media stream is encoded into numerous variants to allow for playback on a variety of devices, networks, and players supporting different resolutions, audio bit rates, quality levels, and even codecs, etc. Live stream variant consumption is monitored and analyzed to dynamically allocate and deallocate resources to processing particular variants based on demand at particular times. Live stream variant consumption can also be predicted to preemptively allocate and deallocate resources.