Analysis of the trial encoding results and generation of an event-adaptive encoding ladder (308) may include performing a curve fitting operation to generate a curve equation representing a performance boundary curve. Referring to FIG. 4A, performance boundary curve 465, depicted by the dashed curve, is determined by fitting a curve equation to points corresponding to the peak quality (i.e., a maximum vertical axis value) achieved at the actual bit rates (i.e., a horizontal axis value) across all trial encoding outputs. For example, in FIG. 4A, for any chosen actual bit rate, the corresponding quality is below the performance boundary curve. The performance boundary curve is an abstraction of a best operating point set on which the highest quality that can be achieved at a particular actual bit rate across all the pruned permutations of encoding profiles in trial encoding profiles 155. It should be appreciated that the performance boundary curve can be generated based on the pruned data points in data space 470 using a variety of curve fitting techniques that minimize the distance between the performance boundary curve and the peak quality levels achieved at each actual bit rate. In the example of FIG. 4A, the curve fitting operation results in performance boundary curve 465 that corresponds to a convex contour, though in other implementations, the performance boundary curve may have different characteristics.