hero eye

The default eye in a stereo (stereoscopic) video pair, often determined by tags set by the cameras used to capture the video.

On iPhone and Apple Vision Pro, stereo video is recorded in the MV-HEVC format, which stores the two views (one for each eye) in separate layers. During MV-HEVC encoding, the hero eye layer gets most of the bit rate, and the other layer receives only the differences between the two eyes. When stereo video is added to a 2D (monoscopic) project, the hero eye’s file is used.

When you record spatial video on iPhone, the Wide (1x) camera records the high-quality hero eye layer.