Patent ID: 7675971

Claim:
A moving picture encoding apparatus for compression-encoding moving picture data, comprising: an encoding unit that performs encoding for respective blocks, each of which includes a plurality of pixels in both horizontal and vertical directions, in one frame that forms a moving picture, in accordance with an encoding parameter serving as an index of an encoded data size; a picture type setting unit that sets a picture type of the frame to be encoded by said encoding unit; a detection unit that detects information associated with a cumulative size of encoded data during an encoding process of the frame by said encoding unit; a comparison unit that compares the detected information with a plurality of thresholds which depend on the picture type set by said picture type setting unit and are used for defining a plurality of zones, each of which indicates the level of the amount of encoded data in the encoding progress of said encoding unit, where the plurality of thresholds for each picture type are set in advance; and an encoding parameter update unit that updates the encoding parameter on the basis of a comparison result of said comparison unit if the zone to which the information detected by said detection unit belongs changes.