Embodiments of the present invention provide a precoding vector indicating method, a precoding vector determining method, a receive end device, and a transmit end device. The precoding vector indicating method includes: determining a plurality of component vectors of an ideal precoding vector and a weight of each component vector based on at least one basic codebook, where each component vector is a column vector of one of the at least one basic codebook; and sending a precoding vector indicator, where the precoding vector indicator is used to indicate the plurality of component vectors and the weight of each component vector. The embodiments of the present invention further provide a precoding vector determining method, a receive end device, and a transmit end device. In the technical solutions provided in the embodiments of the present invention, a basic codebook is constructed based on a plurality of parameters, so that the basic codebook can be used to more accurately describe a channel environment. In this way, a precoding vector determined based on the basic codebook provided in the embodiments of the present invention can more accurately match a channel, thereby improving a precoding effect.