Patent ID: 8401318

Claim:
A motion vector detecting apparatus comprising: an evaluation-value information generating unit that generates evaluation value information indicating the evaluation value of a motion vector on the basis of pixel-value correlation information indicating the correlation between a target pixel in a first frame among multiple frames for moving image data and a reference pixel in a search area in a second frame, the evaluation value information indicating the result of evaluation of the possibility that the reference pixel is a candidate for a motion from the target pixel; a motion-vector extracting unit that extracts a candidate for the motion vector corresponding to each pixel in the frames of the moving image data on the basis of the evaluation value information generated by the evaluation-value information generating unit; and a motion-vector allocating unit that adaptively sets a constant area around each of the target pixel and the reference pixel corresponding to the candidate for the motion vector extracted by the motion-vector extracting unit in accordance with a state indicating the continuity of a constant pixel value and allocates the motion vector from the first frame to the second frame for each pixel on the basis of the result of comparison of the correlation between the constant areas, the motion-vector allocating unit setting the constant area to be an area including the target pixel and at least one other pixel, an absolute value of a difference between a luminance of the target pixel and a luminance of each of the at least one other pixel is less than a threshold, and each of the at least one other pixel is spatially contiguous to the target pixel.