Patent ID: 8204126

Claim:
A video codec apparatus that codes video data, decodes the coded video data, and generates an interpolation frame in the decoding, said video codec apparatus comprising: a first motion vector estimation unit configured to calculate an evaluation value using one of predetermined calculating formulas, and estimate a first motion vector for the video data using the calculated evaluation value, the evaluation value being to be used for evaluating a correlation between images; a coding unit configured to code the video data using the first motion vector and output a coded stream; a decoding unit configured to decode the coded stream and output video frames resulting from the decoding; a frame interpolation unit configured to generate an interpolation frame using the first motion vector and the video frames; and a calculating formula selecting unit configured to select one of the predetermined calculating formulas depending upon whether said first motion vector estimation unit is estimating a motion vector for the coding or for the generating the interpolation frame, wherein said first motion vector estimation unit is used both for the coding and for the generating the interpolation frame and is configured to calculate the evaluation value using the calculating formula selected by said calculating formula selecting unit and estimate the first motion vector using the calculated evaluation value.