A system, apparatus and method for synchronizing distributed adaptive streaming transcoders or packagers includes a plurality of distributed transcoders having one or more processors configured to perform the functions of identifying the output track timescale, identifying from an input signal a frame time information and optionally adjusting it for the output track timescale, calculating the frame time information of the frame relative to a time anchor by adjusting it with a synchronization time stamp, identifying a fixed segment duration by reading it from a memory, computing an earliest presentation time of a next media segment as an integer multiple of the fixed segment duration times the output track timescale, generating the next media segment with the fixed segment duration and the earliest presentation time of the next media segment, and transmitting the next media segment using an HTTP Request or a receiver.