Techniques for video conferencing including receiving bandwidth and/or codec characteristics of a plurality of video conference participants, determining whether or not any of the bandwidth and/or codec characteristics are sufficiently different from others of the bandwidth and/or codec characteristics to warrant different treatment, when one or more of the bandwidth and/or codec characteristics are sufficiently different, grouping video conference participants into at least a first group and a second group according to video conference participants having same or similar bandwidth and/or codec characteristics, and establishing a video conference with at least first and second subconferences to service the first and second groups, respectively, wherein each of the video conference participants receives frames of video in which a first portion of the frames is encoded by a shared encoder, and wherein a second portion of the frames is encoded by different encoders respectively designated for each of the video conference participants.