A video data communication method and apparatus for a data communication that enable improving video quality, at a recipient device, and transmission efficiency by transmitting video data using both contention free transmission mechanism and priority-based transmission mechanism are provided. A video data transmission method ion includes dividing video data into different types of slices; assigning different transport priorities to slice types in accordance with importance for recovering, at a recipient device, the video data; and transmitting the slices on the basis of the transport priorities.