Patent ID: 8145002

Claim:
An image encoding device for receiving a color moving image signal composed of a plurality of color components as an input, dividing the color moving image signal into predetermined encoding unit areas for each of the plurality of color components, and selectively applying one of intra encoding and motion compensation prediction encoding to digitally compress the color moving image signal, comprising: a block dividing unit for dividing the input color moving image signal into predetermined blocks to generate a signal of each of the encoding unit areas; a predicted image generating unit for generating a predicted image for the signal of each of the encoding unit areas according to at least one prediction mode indicating a predicted image generating method and corresponding prediction overhead information; a determining unit for determining a prediction mode used for encoding and corresponding prediction overhead information according to a prediction efficiency of the predicted image output from the predicted image generating unit; a prediction error encoding unit for encoding a difference between the predicted image corresponding to the prediction mode determined by the determining unit and the input color moving image signal; and an encoding unit for variable length-coding the prediction mode, the corresponding prediction overhead information, and an output from the prediction error encoding unit, wherein: the determining unit selects one of use of the prediction mode used for encoding and the corresponding prediction overhead information in an area to be encoded of another color component constituting the same screen at the same image position and use of its own prediction mode and corresponding prediction overhead information for the color component to determine the prediction mode used for encoding and the corresponding prediction overhead information; and the encoding unit multiplexes a prediction information encoding indication flag indicating means used for determining the prediction mode and the corresponding prediction overhead information in the bit stream for each of the encoding unit areas.