Patent ID: 8254458

Claim:
A moving picture encoding apparatus for encoding a stereoscopic moving picture and an interlaced moving picture, the apparatus comprising: a moving picture type judgment section configured to judge whether a moving picture to be encoded is a stereoscopic moving picture or an interlaced moving picture based on an input picture signal representing the moving picture to be encoded, right-eye pictures and left-eye pictures arranged alternately in every other column in the stereoscopic moving picture, pictures of odd number rows and pictures of even number rows arranged alternately in every other row in the interlaced moving picture; a motion detection section configured to select a prediction mode in accordance with a type of the moving picture indicating whether the moving picture to be encoded is a stereoscopic moving picture or an interlaced moving picture, obtained by the judgment, and that, when an interframe prediction mode is selected as the prediction mode, detects a motion vector for the moving picture to be encoded; a motion compensation section configured to perform a motion compensation for the moving picture based on the type of the moving picture, the selected prediction mode, and the detected motion vector; a spatial prediction section configured to perform a spatial prediction for the moving picture based on the type of the moving picture and the selected prediction mode; an orthogonal transformation section configured to perform an orthogonal transformation for a predictive residue signal obtained as a difference between a predicted picture signal obtained by the motion compensation or the spatial prediction and the input picture signal, based on the type of the moving picture and the selected prediction mode; and a variable length encoding section configured to perform a predetermined picture processing including a variable length encoding for the picture after the orthogonal transformation, based on the type of the moving picture and the selected prediction mode.