Patent ID: 7432958

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: a moving-picture pickup unit that picks up a moving picture and outputs a first moving-picture signal having a first horizontal pixel density; a storage unit that stores a still picture having a second horizontal pixel density; a first horizontal pixel density conversion unit that reads out the still picture from the storage unit and converts the second horizontal pixel density thereof into the first horizontal pixel density; a picture synthesis unit that synthesizes the still picture having a horizontal pixel density having been converted into the first horizontal pixel density by the first horizontal pixel density conversion unit with one of the first moving-picture signal outputted from the moving-picture pickup unit and second moving-picture signal having the first horizontal pixel density; a second horizontal pixel density conversion unit that converts the first horizontal pixel density of the synthesized picture outputted from the picture synthesis unit into the second horizontal pixel density; and a write control unit that writes the synthesized picture outputted from the second horizontal pixel density conversion unit into the storage unit.