MV-HEVC 4K per-eye video on Meta Quest & Meta VR with HISPlayer
HISPlayer Unity and Unreal Player SDKs support Apple MV-HEVC 4K video on Meta Quest and Meta VR glasses.
Your team finished a stereoscopic film for Apple Vision Pro. It’s encoded in MV-HEVC; it looks stunning, and now someone asks: can we ship it on Meta Quest too?
Until recently, that meant re-encoding everything into side-by-side 3D. Side-by-side packs both eyes into one frame and halves the horizontal resolution each eye gets. You’d be handing a weaker version of your best work to the largest XR audience out there.
The HISPlayer Unity and Unreal Video Player SDKs remove that step. They play Apple MV-HEVC video at up to 4K per eye on Meta Quest and Meta VR glasses, inside your own app. HISPlayer is the only Unity and Unreal player SDK doing this on Meta Quest today. We first brought Apple MV-HEVC playback to Meta Quest in our Unity SDK; now it runs in Unreal Engine too.
What is MV-HEVC, and why does it matter on Meta Quest?
MV-HEVC (Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding) is the multiview extension of H.265/HEVC. It was built for content that shows the same scene from more than one viewpoint, such as the left and right eyes in stereoscopic 3D.
Traditional 3D video packs both eyes into one frame, either side by side or top and bottom. MV-HEVC takes a different approach. It stores each eye as its own layer: a base layer for one eye and a second layer for the other. Because both eyes see almost the same scene, the second layer is predicted from the first, and the encoder only sends what actually differs between the views.
Top 3 benefits of MV-HEVC
1. Full resolution for each eye. Side-by-side 3D halves the horizontal resolution each eye gets. MV-HEVC gives each eye its own full frame, so detail and depth stay intact. With HISPlayer on Meta Quest, that means up to 4K per eye.
2. Lower bitrate for the same quality. The official verification tests found MV-HEVC needs over 30% less bitrate than encoding each eye separately with HEVC. NVIDIA measured up to 27% savings with its own hardware encoder. For streaming services, that translates into smoother playback on headset Wi-Fi and lower CDN costs.
3. One format for every screen. The base layer is standard 2D HEVC, so flat devices can still play the file. And MV-HEVC is the stereo format adopted by both Apple’s visionOS and Google’s Android XR. One master can serve every platform instead of a separate encode for each.
Together, these make MV-HEVC the strongest candidate for a single, future-proof stereo master. Meta Quest support closes the biggest remaining gap.
How HISPlayer plays Apple MV-HEVC on Meta Quest
In Unity
The HISPlayer Unity Video Player SDK plays MV-HEVC as true 3D spatial video, up to 4K per eye, on Meta Quest and Meta VR glasses. It sits alongside HLS and DASH streaming, 180° and 360° layouts, and 8K playback. The same Unity project can also target Apple Vision Pro, so one codebase reaches both ecosystems.
In Unreal Engine
The HISPlayer Unreal Video Player SDK brings the same Apple MV-HEVC playback to Unreal projects on Meta Quest. You also get Vulkan rendering for high resolutions and synchronized multistream playback. That’s a strong fit for cinematic, sports and location-based VR teams already building in Unreal.
With the rest of your premium stack
Premium immersive content usually needs protection and sound to match. The same SDKs support Widevine Level 1 DRM on Meta Quest and Dolby Atmos and Dolby Audio. You’re working with one player, not stitching three plugins together.
One video file, every headset
MV-HEVC is fast becoming the default format for stereo video. The question is no longer whether to use it, but where you can ship it.
With HISPlayer SDK, one Apple MV-HEVC video content serves Vision Pro, Android XR (Galaxy XR) devices, and Meta devices, at up to 4K per eye and around 30% less bitrate than encoding each eye separately. And it works in both Unity and Unreal Engine.
Planning a spatial video release? Start by testing your own MV-HEVC files on Quest. Request a demo of the HISPlayer Meta Quest Video Player SDK, and we’ll help you run it.