Patent ID: 8218646
Filing Date: 2012-07-10
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A moving image encoding apparatus which carries out two-step encoding such that the nature of an image to be encoded is analyzed on the basis of results of first-step encoding, and second-step encoding is carried out on the basis of results of the analysis, the apparatus comprising: first-step encoding means for executing a plurality of times the first-step encoding by use of different quantization control variables for each frame; code-amount estimation means for estimating, for all the quantization control variables, an amount of codes generated for each frame by making use of a plurality of results of the encoding by the first-step encoding means; code-amount allocation means for allocating an amount of codes for each frame on the basis of results of the estimation by the code-amount estimation means; and second-step encoding means for executing the second-step encoding on the basis of the amount of codes allocated to each frame by the code-amount allocation means, wherein the first-step encoding means omits the motion vector detecting process, the de-blocking filter process, the motion compensation prediction process, the inverse quantization process, and the IDCT process contained in the second and subsequent executions of the encoding process for each frame.