A method implemented by an ingress node in a traffic engineering (TE) multicast domain along a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) path. The method includes receiving a packet from a traffic source; encapsulating the packet with a multicast routing header (MRH) for a sub-tree of the P2MP path through the TE multicast domain, wherein the MRH indicates the sub-tree by encoding link information of one or more links on the sub-tree, the link information of the one or more links comprising a link number of a link from the ingress node to a next hop node or a link bit indicating whether the link corresponding the link number is on the sub-tree; and sending the packet with the MRH toward the next hop node along the sub-tree.