An apparatus includes circuitry configured to: receive information to cull one or more sets of components belonging to the same atlas from at least one volumetric video bitstream; wherein the information comprises one or more of: atlas-to-view mapping metadata indicating an association between patches in at least one atlas and at least one view; atlas-to-object mapping metadata indicating an association between at least one object and the at least one atlas; patch atlas metadata within a metadata for immersive video master atlas to indicate sub-bitstream culling based on fine-grained patch visibility culling; or partial access metadata, wherein leveraging the partial access metadata comprises storing each of the at least one atlas in its own track, and providing sample grouping information to indicate culling on a file format level; and cull the one or more sets of components from the at least one volumetric video bitstream, based on the information.