The bandwidth demand of HD content is driving the use of more efficient video compression such as MPEG4 (H.264) encoding for satellite distribution, and statistical multiplexing for MSO access networks. Transcoding and statistical multiplexing are usually implemented independently; however, in this paper we show that this is not the best approach. We show that integrating the transcoding and statistical multiplexing operations will result in improved video quality, reduced operational complexity and lower cost. The paper is organized into four sections: Introduction, Transcoding, Statistical Multiplexing, and Conclusion