Patent ID: 7359561

Claim:
A picture encoding apparatus comprising: memory means for writing and storing an input picture from one line to another; wavelet transform means for applying a wavelet transform in the horizontal and vertical directions each time a number of lines required for the wavelet transform is stored in said memory means, the wavelet transform means generating wavelet transform coefficients for a plurality of sub-bands; block picture analysis means for analyzing the input picture and generating block area analysis information; block area weight computing means for weighting a block area from the block area analysis information and outputting block area weights; scalar quantization means for scalar quantizing wavelet transform coefficients for each sub-band obtained from said wavelet transform means and outputting scalar quantization coefficients; block area weight coefficient computing means for multiplying the block area weights with weighting coefficients from a table for each sub-band generated at the time of the wavelet transform and with the scalar quantization coefficients and outputting the multiplied result as quantization coefficients; and entropy encoding means for entropy encoding the quantized coefficients for each sub-band from said quantization means in units of block areas when the number of samples of said quantized coefficients has reached the size of a block area required for entropy encoding.