Patent ID: 8594185

Claim:
An image coding apparatus which codes an input image on a block basis, the image coding apparatus comprising: a coding condition determining unit configured to determine a coding condition for each block; a predictive coding unit configured to generate transformed data by generating a predictive image based on the coding condition determined by the coding condition determining unit and performing orthogonal transform on a difference between the predictive image generated and the input image; a local decoding unit configured to generate a reconstructed image by performing inverse-transform on the transformed data generated by the predictive coding unit and adding-up the inverse-transformed data and the predictive image; a storage unit configured to store the reconstructed images generated by the local decoding unit; an entropy coding unit configured to generate coded data by performing entropy coding on the transformed data generated by the predictive coding unit; a switching unit configured to select one of the coded data generated by the entropy coding unit and uncompressed image data corresponding to the coded data, and to output the selected one of the coded data and the uncompressed image data; a judging unit configured to judge whether or not a code amount of the coded data generated by the entropy coding unit is larger than a threshold that is determined in advance; and a control unit configured to change a coding type of a first block and a coding type of a second block to a specified coding type that is determined in advance, when the judging unit judges that a code amount of coded data generated by coding the first block is larger than the threshold, the first block being one of the blocks making up the input image, and the second block being at least one of the blocks that are not yet coded, wherein the switching unit is configured to output the uncompressed image data corresponding to the coded data when the coding type of the coded data is the specified coding type, the predictive coding unit and the entropy coding unit are configured to perform pipeline processing having n-stages (where n is an integer equal to or greater than 2), and when the judging unit judges that the code amount of the coded data is larger than the threshold, the control unit is configured to change, to I_PCM, the coding type of only the second blocks up to an appearance of a block having a coding type that is one of skip, direct, and inter among the blocks that are not yet coded.