Patent ID: 7986847

Claim:
A digital video camera that encodes a moving image according to an encoding method where not all I pictures and P pictures are necessarily used as reference images, the digital video camera comprising: an image sensing unit configured to pick up a plurality of image frames of a subject and generate camera information relating to a state of the digital video camera of each of the plurality of image frames as each image frame is being picked up, and generate the moving image including the plurality of image frames; an intra-picture predicting encoding unit configured to encode an image frame of the generated moving image based on an intra-picture prediction and generate an I picture; a motion information detecting unit configured to detect motion information of the image frame of the generated moving image to be encoded using at least one of the reference images; an inter-picture prediction encoding unit configured to encode a difference between (i) the image frame of the generated moving image to be encoded and (ii) a predicted image frame generated based on the motion information of the image frame to be encoded, which is detected by the motion information detecting unit, and generate a P picture or a B picture; a storage unit configured to store decoded images, which are obtained by decoding the I picture generated by the intra-picture prediction encoding unit and the P picture generated by the inter-picture prediction encoding unit, respectively, as candidate images of the reference images; a camera information manager unit configured to receive the camera information of each of the plurality of image frames of the moving image and detect an image frame having low inter-frame continuity based on the camera information of the respective image frame; and a selecting unit configured to select decoded images to be stored in the storage unit as the candidate images so that decoded images obtained by decoding I pictures or P pictures, which are obtained by encoding image frames detected by the camera information manager unit as image frames having low inter-frame continuity, are not stored in the storage unit, wherein the motion information detecting unit obtains the at least one reference image from among a plurality of decoded images selected by the selecting unit and stored as the candidate images in the storage unit.