1. A method of retrieving multimedia data, the method comprising: analyzing at least a first portion of a manifest file for multimedia content, wherein the first portion of the manifest file includes information indicative of sets of representations of the multimedia content, information indicative of common characteristics for each of the sets of representations, and information indicative of a location of a second portion of the manifest file, wherein analyzing the at least first portion comprises determining the location of the second portion of the manifest file; selecting one of the sets of representations based on the common characteristics for the one of the sets of representations; selecting one of the representations of the selected one of the sets of representations based on one or more coding characteristics of the one of the representations of the one of the sets; generating a request for a first set of multimedia data of the one of the representations based on the selection; retrieving at least the second portion of the manifest file from the location determined from the first portion of the manifest file; analyzing the at least second portion of the manifest file to determine a location of a second set of multimedia data and retrieving at least a portion of the second set of multimedia data from the location determined from the second portion of the manifest file.