Patent ID: 7158682

Claim:
An image processing apparatus which processes image data of a motion picture having a number of frames, each frame being divided into one or a plurality of rectangular portions, the image processing apparatus comprising: an image compression device performing a discrete wavelet transform of pixel values for each rectangular portion to produce wavelet coefficients, and performing a hierarchical compression coding of the wavelet coefficients for each rectangular portion so that a codestream is produced; and a codestream transform device provided to reduce an amount of code data in the codestream after the compression coding, the codestream transform device comprising: a syntax analysis unit analyzing header information of the codestream; a comparison unit determining a similarity between a current frame and a preceding frame in the codestream based on a result of the analysis of the syntax analysis unit; and a codestream generating unit deleting code data of a corresponding rectangular portion of the current frame when the similarity is larger than a given threshold value.