A system, method, and bit-stream format thereof for delivery, scalable encoded media data is described. The scalable encoded bit-stream is formatted to have first and second portions. The first portion corresponds at least to non-media type specific scalability attributes of the original encoded media data and data structure information of a second portion and the second portion corresponds to the original scalable encoded media data arranged in a non-media type specific indexable data structure having at least one dimension. The formatted media data allows the system and method to provide seamless, flexible delivery to media destinations having a variety of receiving attributes. The media data is transcoded prior to delivery based on the receiving attributes of the media destination and non-media specific scalability attributes of the formatted scalable encoded media bit-stream.