An aspect of the disclosure is directed to transmitting a reduced stream of encoded video frames. An original stream of encoded video frames is analyzed, a plurality of frames are removed without re-encoding encoded video frames to generate the reduced stream of encoded video frames, and the reduced stream and metadata describing the plurality of removed frames are transmitted. An aspect of the disclosure is directed to creating a new version of an original stream of encoded video frames from a reduced stream of encoded video frames. The reduced stream of encoded video frames is received, the plurality of removed frames is identified based on metadata related to the reduced stream, a plurality of replacement frames are generated, and the plurality of replacement frames are added to the reduced stream of encoded video frames to recreate the new version of the original stream of encoded video frames.