This paper presents an adaptive video encoder that can be used to compare the behavior of different adaptation strategies using multiple actuators to steer the encoder towards a global goal, composed of multiple conflicting objectives. A video camera produces frames that the encoder manipulates with the objective of matching some space requirement to fit a given communication channel. A second objective is to maintain a given similarity index between the manipulated frames and the original ones. To achieve the goal, the software can change three parameters: the quality of the encoding, the noise reduction filter radius and the sharpening filter radius. In most cases the objectives -- small encoded size and high quality -- conflict, since a larger frame would have a higher similarity index to its original counterpart. This makes the problem difficult from the control perspective and makes the case study appealing to compare different adaptation strategies.