The invention discloses a video transmission method and apparatus based on a scalable video coding technology, and relates to the technical field of mobile communication. By adoption of the video transmission method and apparatus, the energy consumption generated in a video transmission process is reduced on the premise of guaranteeing the user experience. The method disclosed by the invention comprises the following steps: obtaining a peak signal-to-noise ratio of each layer of videos, and searching a video quality assessment result corresponding to the peak signal-to-noise ratio in a mapping relation between the peak signal-to-noise ratio and the video quality assessment result; setting a playing time set; determining overall video quality corresponding to each group of playing times according to the video quality assessment result and each group of playing times; determining playing times in which the overall video quality is greater than a reference threshold as to-be-selected playing times; and determining the to-be-selected playing time having the lowest overall video energy consumption in the to-be-selected playing times as a specified playing time, and playing a video according to the specified playing time. The video transmission method and apparatus disclosed by the invention are suitable for transmitting videos.