1. A method comprising: determining pixel data for a plurality of macroblocks, each macroblock having a plurality of pixels, the macroblocks defined to be embedded in respective video frames of a video stream, wherein the pixel data for each pixel in each macroblock is based on a frame number of a respective video frame and a location of the pixel within the macroblock; embedding the macroblocks in the respective video frames; transmitting the video frames with the embedded macroblocks to a remote client; and calculating a performance metric for the transmitted video stream based on the macroblocks received at the remote client, wherein operations of the method are executed by a processor.