Patent ID: 7440629

Claim:
An image encoding apparatus comprising: a memory that is commonly used for both encoding processing and other kinds of processing; a monitoring unit operable to monitor an amount of accesses to the memory; a selecting unit operable to select, according to a result of the monitoring performed by the monitoring unit, one of a direct-current prediction encoding method and an alternating-current prediction encoding method and to select the direct-current prediction encoding method in a case where the monitoring unit judges that the amount of the accesses to the memory is equal to or larger than a value and to select the alternating-current prediction encoding method in a case where the monitoring unit judges that the amount of the accesses to the memory is smaller than the value; a DC prediction encoding unit operable to, when the direct-current prediction encoding method is selected, perform direct-current prediction encoding for each of blocks constituting a piece of image data; and an AC prediction encoding unit operable to, when the alternating-current prediction encoding method is selected, perform alternating-current prediction encoding for each of blocks constituting a piece of image data.