Patent ID: 7801369

Claim:
An image decoder comprising: a demultiplexer which extracts motion vector information, quantized DCT coefficients, and rounding method information from input information to be decoded; a dequantizer which dequantizes the quantized DCT coefficients to obtain DCT coefficients; an inverse DCT converter which performs inverse DCT conversion on the DCT coefficients to obtain an error image; a prediction image synthesizer which synthesizes a prediction image of a currently decoded image by performing motion compensation using the motion vector information, the rounding method information, and a reference image which is a previously decoded image; and an adder which adds the prediction image to the error image to obtain a decoded image; wherein the motion compensation is performed with half-pixel accuracy and uses bilinear interpolation to calculate intensity values of chrominance or luminance at points where no pixels actually exist in the reference image, the bilinear interpolation being performable using a positive rounding method and a negative rounding method; wherein the bilinear interpolation is performed using a rounding method specified by the rounding method information; wherein the rounding method information is included in coded information of the currently decoded image; wherein the rounding method information specifies one of two values; wherein one of the two values specifies a positive rounding method, and another one of the two values specifies a negative rounding method; and wherein the rounding method information consists of one bit.