1. A method for transitioning compression levels between image frames in a streaming image system, the method comprising: receiving by a smoothing module a request for a new compression level associated with an image frame; 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; and setting by the smoothing module the new compression level for the image frame based on the generated multi-frame smoothing routine.