Patent ID: 7664178

Claim:
An LSI circuit which generates multiplexed data obtained by multiplexing coded audio data and coded picture data, said LSI circuit comprising: an audio coding circuit configured to obtain the coded audio data by coding audio data; a picture coding circuit configured to obtain the coded picture data by coding a moving picture including a plurality of pictures each picture having a prescribed number of pixels; and a multiplexing circuit configured to multiplex the coded audio data and the coded picture data, wherein said picture coding circuit includes: a level identifier output circuit configured to select a coding level which indicates a level of the coding processing for the moving picture and to output a level identifier for identifying the selected coding level; a coded data generating circuit configured to generate coded data of the moving picture by coding the moving picture according to the selected coding level; and a coded sequence generating circuit configured to multiplex the level identifier and the coded data to generate a code sequence, wherein the level identifier is an identifier that identifies i) a maximum in-frame pixel number which conforms to the selected coding level, the maximum in-frame pixel number being a maximum pixel number allowed for a picture of the moving picture, and ii) a maximum storage pixel number which conforms to the selected coding level, the maximum storage pixel number indicating an amount of data that can be stored in a picture memory; wherein said coded data generating circuit includes a predictive coding circuit configured to predictively code a picture to be coded with reference to a reference picture which has been coded; wherein a maximum number of candidate reference pictures which can be stored in the picture memory is calculated based on a vertical pixel number and a horizontal pixel number of the moving picture which is to be coded and the maximum storage pixel number identified by the level identifier, wherein the vertical pixel number (h) and the horizontal pixel number (w) of the moving picture satisfy the following condition: h×w<=(the maximum in-frame pixel number), where the vertical pixel number (h) is a multiple of 16, and the horizontal pixel number (w) is a multiple of 16.