Patent ID: 6965642

Claim:
A moving image data compression/decompression method, which compresses data on a moving image in units of frames each formed of a large number of pixels and decompresses compressed image data into an original moving image, comprising a data compression step and a data decompression step; said data compression step including: an image data extraction step of extracting image data on a previously specified partial area in said frame; a first data compression step of compressing said image data on said partial area extracted in the image data extraction step; an image reduction step of reducing the size of said frame by decreasing the number of pixels forming said frame; a second data compression step of compressing said data on said frame reduced in the image reduction step; and a compressed data outputting step of holding data groups sequentially into a memory, each of said data groups being formed of said data frame compressed in said second data compression step and said image data on said partial area compressed in said first data compression step, for each frame forming said moving image, and holding information representing a position of said partial area on said frame, into said memory, to create compressed moving image data; said data decompression step including: a compressed image data extraction step of separately extracting frame data and image data on said partial area, data-compressed for each frame, from said compressed moving image data stored in said memory; a first image decompression step of decompressing said compressed image data on said partial area, extracted in said compressed image data extraction step, into image data before compression; a second image decompression step of decompressing said compressed frame data extracted in said compressed image data extraction step, into frame data before compression; an image enlargement step of increasing the number of pixels forming said frame to create data concerning an enlarged frame from data decompressed in said second image decompression step, the size of said enlarged frame being represented by said decompressed data; and an image synthesis step of synthesizing, for each frame, said image data decompressed in said first image decompression step with said image data created in said image enlargement step to dispose an image represented by data decompressed in said first image decompression step at a position of said frame represented by positional information added to said moving image data.