Abstract Aiming at the problem of energy efficient transmission for multiple paths under differential delay constraint, we propose a method of optical grooming based on dynamic splitting under differential delay constraint algorithm (OG-DSDA) for optical networks. When a multicast demand cannot be groomed due to the bandwidth fragment, the method constructs two types of logic light-tree sets according to the differential delay constraint between source node and destinations. In order to reduce the network link costs caused by too many split parts, the method gives high priority to the first type logic light-trees with the maximum available bandwidth to meet the requirement. When the bandwidth of first type logic light-tree is insufficient for all sub-requests, the rest of sub-demands is adaptively groomed into a light-tree in second set of light-trees with the lower power consumption. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively decrease the network blocking probability and reduce network’s energy consumption.