Techniques are provided for transmitting high quality multimedia data from a mobile device for live and on-demand viewing. The mobile device adjusts the quality of a single multimedia data stream based on one or more factors, such as the available bandwidth of a wireless link with a server, whether there are any “live” subscribers of the multimedia data stream, whether any “live” subscribers are interacting with the mobile device, and a change in the privacy settings of the user of the mobile device. Any data that was removed from the multimedia data stream before it was transmitted to a server is subsequently sent to the server. The server generates multiple versions of the multimedia data stream that vary in terms of quality. The server selects which version of the multimedia data stream to transmit to a subscriber of the multimedia data stream based on one or more criteria.