1. A method for generating a utility-based descriptor from compressed multimedia information, comprising the steps of: (a) receiving at least a segment of said compressed multimedia information; (b) determining two or more portions of utility based descriptor information based on one or more adaptation operations, each of which corresponds to one or more resource constraints for a particular one of said one or more adaptation operations; (c) adapting said received compressed multimedia segment by each of said two or more portions of said utility based descriptor information to generate two or more adapted multimedia segments, each corresponding to a different one of said two or more portions; (d) using a quality measurement method to generate a quality measurement for each of said two or more adapted multimedia segments; and (e) generating a utility based descriptor based on said two or more portions of utility based descriptor information and said corresponding quality measurements.