A system and method for multi-bitrate and multi-spatial resolution media encoding are disclosed. In an embodiment for encoding a sequence of pictures at a given spatial resolution to an encoding format at a plurality of output bitrates, the sequence of pictures and a picture type for each of the pictures are received. Further, best combinations of encoding parameters for each coding tree block (CTB) in each of the pictures are identified from a determined set of combinations of encoding parameters supported by the encoding format for the associated picture type. Furthermore, the sequence of pictures are encoded using the best of the identified combinations of encoding parameters for each CTB in each of the pictures to create media bit streams at the plurality of output bitrates.