Netflix transitioned its Live events from Constant Bitrate (CBR) to Variable Bitrate (VBR) encoding for improved efficiency. VBR dynamically adjusts bitrate based on scene complexity, leading to reduced average traffic and improved quality of experience. A major challenge with VBR is the unpredictability of traffic, which can lead to server overload and instability due to large bitrate swings. To address this, Netflix implemented a new capacity reservation system based on nominal bitrates, mitigating the risks associated with VBR's variable nature. They also adjusted nominal bitrates across their streaming ladder to match the quality of CBR streams, using VMAF as a guiding metric. The shift to VBR allowed for efficiency gains like lower rebuffering and initial start delays. Netflix is now working on improving its adaptive bitrate algorithms and capacity reservation to further optimize VBR. The implementation of VBR was a company-wide project involving several teams and contributors.