A processing system including at least one processor may obtain a selection of a desired perceptual quality for a video and selects a first video chunk from among a first plurality of video chunks, wherein the first plurality of video chunks is associated with a first time block of the video, wherein the selecting is based upon a manifest file of the video, wherein each video chunk of the first plurality of video chunks is associated with a respective perceptual quality and a respective encoding bitrate, wherein the first video chunk is part of a subset of the first plurality of video chunks for which the respective perceptual quality matches the desired perceptual quality within a predefined threshold tolerance, and wherein the respective encoding bitrate of the first video chunk is lower than a highest encoding bitrate associated with the subset of the first plurality of video chunks. The processing system may obtain the first video chunk from a server and store the first video chunk in a buffer.