Patent ID: 8345968

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 color component separating unit for separating an input bit stream for each of the plurality of color components; a block dividing unit for dividing an input color component signal into blocks of a size determined by encoded block size indication information indicating whether or not signals of respective color components are encoded by an independent encoding process to generate a signal of each of the encoding unit areas, wherein said independent encoding process corresponds to a process of encoding the input color component signal by an independent macroblock type information; a predicted image generating unit for generating a predicted image for the signal of each of the encoding unit areas according to a prediction mode of each of the encoding unit areas indicating a predicted image generating method; a determining unit for determining a prediction mode used for encoding 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 component signal; and an encoding unit for variable length-coding the prediction mode, an output from the prediction error encoding unit, and a color component identification flag indicating the color component to which the input bit stream belongs as a result of the color component separation, wherein the encoding unit multiplexes the encoded block size indication information, and information obtained by encoding the prediction mode for each of the encoding unit areas and the prediction error in the bit stream.