Patent ID: 7756205

Claim:
A moving image encoding method for encoding a moving image while switching between a context-adaptive variable-length coding scheme for adaptively coding according to a characteristic of the moving image, and a context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding scheme for adaptively coding according to a characteristic of the moving image, said method comprising: determining, using a processor, a continuous unit of the moving image to be seamlessly and continuously reproduced without a gap, the determined continuous unit including reproduction segments; generating, using the processor, a moving image stream by encoding, for each reproduction segment included in the determined continuous unit, the moving image according to one of the context-adaptive variable-length coding scheme and the context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding scheme; generating, using the processor, management information that includes first flag information indicating, for each reproduction segment included in the determined continuous unit, whether one of the context-adaptive variable-length coding scheme and the context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding scheme has been used to encode the reproduction segments included in the continuous unit of the moving image; and outputting, using the processor, the moving image stream and the management information separately.