Patent ID: 7778474

Claim:
A scalable encoding method for decomposing an image signal into signals assigned to a plurality of layers so as to encode the image signal, the method comprising the steps of: encoding an image signal of at least one target layer among the layers based on an amount of codes allocated to the target layer, and outputting a residual signal of the target layer corresponding to a difference between the pre-encoded image signal and an image signal decoded from the encoded image signal; determining a target amount of codes allocated for encoding the residual signal based on the residual signal, an amount of codes allocated to an objective layer, and an image signal of the objective layer; encoding the residual signal based on the determined target amount of codes; and revising the amount of codes allocated to the objective layer based on the target amount of codes and encoding the image signal of the objective layer based on the revised amount of codes, wherein the steps are carried out by the computer.