Patent ID: 8059717

Claim:
An image coding apparatus that performs orthogonal transformation, quantization, inverse quantization, inverse orthogonal transformation, and intra prediction on all blocks obtained when a single macroblock is divided into plural blocks, said apparatus comprising: a control unit operable to cause all of the blocks to be intra predicted using at least one of the intra prediction modes specified in the H.264 standard on at least some of the blocks, in an order different from the raster scan order specified in the H.264 standard; and an output unit operable to output, in the raster scan order, all the blocks intra predicted under the control of said control unit, wherein the macroblock has 16 lines made up of 16 pixels each, the blocks each have 4 lines made up of 4 pixels each, and assuming the position of each block in the macroblock is expressed as (X, Y) coordinates, where X, Y=0, 1, 2, 3 starting from the upper left of the macroblock, said control unit is operable to: (A) cause the blocks located in positions (0, 1), (2, 1), (0, 3), and (2, 3) to be intra predicted through modes 0 , 1 , 2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and 8 specified in the H.264 standard; (B) cause the blocks located in positions (1, 0) and (3, 3) to be intra predicted through modes 0 , 3 , and 7 specified in the H.264 standard; (C) cause the blocks located in positions (0, 0), (2, 0), (3, 0), (1, 1), (3, 1), (0, 2), (1, 2), (2, 2), (3, 2), and (1, 3) to be intra predicted through modes 0 through 8 specified in the H.264 standard; and (D) cause the 16 blocks to be intra predicted in the following order: (0, 0), (1, 0), (0, 1), (2, 0), (1, 1), (3, 0), (2, 1), (0, 2), (3, 1), (1, 2), (0, 3), (2, 2), (1, 3), (3, 2), (2, 3), (3, 3).