A method and apparatus for selecting at least one transcoding method for manipulating multimedia data for delivery on the basis of analysis of the content of the multimedia data. Many possible transcoding operations can be performed on multimedia data to adapt it to constraints in delivery and display, processing and storage of client devices. The selection of specific transcoding operations can be made by first analyzing the features, purposes and relevances of the individual multimedia objects within the multimedia documents, then by selecting the transcoding alternatives according to the results of the analysis. Based on the analysis, different transcoding algorithms can be applied to different content, less than all of the content can be transcoded, groups of multimedia objects can be transcoded, etc.