A method and an apparatus for processing video data. The method includes: parsing media presentation description to obtain flag information, where the flag information is used to identify a first representation of a video, where playing duration of a segment in the first representation is shorter than playing duration of a segment in a second representation of the video; obtaining switching instruction information, where the switching instruction information is used to instruct to switch from a current spatial object to a target spatial object; determining a target representation from the first representation of the video based on the flag information and the switching instruction information, where the target representation corresponds to the target spatial object; and obtaining a current playing moment of the video, and obtaining a target representation segment based on the current playing moment and the target representation.