Patent ID: 8223842

Claim:
A moving picture decoding device for decoding moving picture data encoded by a predictive encoding method, the moving picture data being composed of a plurality of pictures that each include blocks, each block including (i) information indicating a reference picture that is referred to in generating a predicted image of the block, and (ii) residual data indicating a difference between a pre-encoding image of the block and the predicted image of the block, the moving picture decoding device comprising: a storage unit operable to store therein pictures obtained by decoding the blocks; a judgment unit operable to judge whether or not the reference picture associated with a target block to be decoded has already been decoded and stored in the storage unit, the reference picture associated with the target block being referred to in encoding the target block, the target block being one of the blocks; and a control unit operable to, in a case where the target block has been encoded by an inter-picture predictive encoding method, perform control for: (i) when the judgment unit judges affirmatively, generating the predicted image of the target block using the reference picture associated with the target block, and decoding the target block using the generated predicted image of the target block and the residual data of the target block; and (ii) when the judgment unit judges negatively, generating the predicted image of the target block using an image of at least one of the blocks that is included in the same picture with the target block and has already been decoded, and decoding the target block using the generated predicted image of the target block and the residual data of the target block.