Patent ID: 8908777

Claim:
A picture processing apparatus comprising: a memory; and a decoding circuit configured to decode encoded picture data through data exchange with said memory and to store a decoded picture in said memory; wherein said memory holds a first field and a second field of the decoded picture and holds a plurality of reference planes, and said decoding circuit includes a motion compensation circuit configured to: effect motion-compensating prediction by performing a motion compensating process, in which: the picture data comprises a plurality of macro blocks, and a given macro block of the plurality of macro blocks is divided into a plurality of divisions, with each of the plurality of reference planes being associated with at least one division of the plurality of divisions, and upon requesting transfer of data from the decoded picture held in said memory to said decoding circuit during the motion compensation process, controlling an order in which transfer requests to the memory are made for the given macro block on the basis of macro block division information and reference picture information such that the transfer requests are sorted into an order on the basis of at least one of (i) a reference plane to which requested divisions correspond and (ii) which of the first and second fields the requested divisions correspond.