Patent ID: 8488678

Claim:
A moving image encoding apparatus comprising: a motion vector search unit that divides a screen into encoding blocks, each constituting a unit of coding, divides the encoding block into one or more motion compensation blocks, each constituting a unit of motion compensation, and performs a motion vector search by referencing, as a reference image, a past or future image with respect to a motion compensation block targeted for encoding; and an encoding unit that encodes a difference value between the motion compensation block targeted for encoding and a prediction image that is based on a motion vector obtained by the motion vector search unit, wherein the motion vector search unit includes: a setting unit that sets a plurality of motion compensation block types with respect to the encoding block, when roughly performing a motion vector search using a reduced image of the reference image; an evaluation value computation unit that performs the motion vector search using the reduced image, for each of the plurality of motion compensation block types set by the setting unit, and computes an evaluation value for each of the plurality of motion compensation block types, based on the plurality of obtained motion vectors; and a determination unit that determines, according to a reliability of a most highly evaluated evaluation value out of the plurality of evaluation values computed by the evaluation value computation unit, whether to set a division method of the motion compensation block type for which the most highly evaluated evaluation value was obtained as a motion compensation block division method for when performing a motion vector search in detail using the reference image.