Patent ID: 8792741

Claim:
An image encoding apparatus comprising: a transformer which sets a transformation unit in a coding unit, wherein a size of the transformation unit is determined independently from a size of at least one prediction unit in the coding unit, performs transformation on the transformation unit to generate transformation coefficients; a quantization unit which quantizes the transformation coefficients of the transformation unit; and an entropy encoder which entropy encodes the quantized transformation coefficients, wherein: an image is split into a plurality of maximum coding units, according to information about a maximum size of the coding unit, the maximum coding unit is hierarchically into one or more coding units of depth including at least one of a current depth and a lower depth, according split information, when the split information indicates a split for the current depth, the coding unit of the current depth is split into four rectangular coding units of a lower depth, independently from neighboring coding units, and when the split information indicates a non-split of the lower depth, the at least one prediction unit is obtained from the coding unit of the lower depth.