Still today, diagnosing a problem with multimedia resources, such as video and sound cards, is insufficiently automated. These resources therefore cannot be accurately managed. One reason for this is the lack of their thorough modeling. In this paper, we fulfill this need, by proposing a generic information model, which we further apply to an MPEG2 video codec. We highlight the main characteristics of this kind of codec, identify parameters that influence these characteristics, and reveal some of the trade-offs that the application developer can consider in order to design efficient software for MPEG2 codecs. In addition to the benefits of this modeling for the user and the application developer, we also show how useful it could be for the providers of distribution services, such as live video transmission. These providers can use our model to achieve resource management on an end-to-end basis.