Abstract: For transmitting multimedia data to a plurality of clients over a network, wherein the multimedia data is stored in a plurality of formats of different multimedia rates, on the basis of utility information for the multimedia data, the utility information describing a relationship between multimedia quality and multimedia rate, and on the basis of a condition of the network, for each of the plurality of clients available multimedia rates for the multimedia data are determined. In response to a client request for transmitting the multimedia data with a desired multimedia rate, in accordance with the available multimedia rates determined for the requesting client, a format of the requested multimedia data is selected and the multimedia data is transmitted in the selected format to the requesting client.