Methods for transitioning compression levels of a streaming image system are disclosed. One embodiment provides a method for transitioning compression levels between image frames in a streaming image system. Embodiments may include receiving by a smoothing module a request for a new compression level associated with an image frame. Embodiments may also generally include performing by the smoothing module a smoothing heuristic by generating a multi-frame smoothing routine based on an initial compression level, a target compression level, and a number of frames to achieve the target compression level. Embodiments may also include setting by the smoothing module the new compression level for the image frame based on the generated multi-frame smoothing routine. Further embodiments may include transmitting by the smoothing module an indication of the new compression level to a content encoder.