Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Matsushita Electric Ind., Ltd.

Akihiko Otani

Makoto Serizawa

Atsushi Ubukata

Takaaki Shingo

In order to realize a picture compression processing with a higher efficiency than ever in motion vector detection for motion picture compression coding, an improvement is provided to motion vector selection process when a plurality of candidate blocks having evaluation values of the same correlation degree have been detected from a search area. When there are a plurality of candidate blocks within the search area which have the highest correlation degree with the coding block, a difference is calculated between each of a plurality of motion vectors corresponding to the plurality of candidate blocks, respectively, and the best motion vector which is variable-coded immediately before the best motion vector which is being determined. Based on the calculated difference, the best motion vector is selected from among the plurality of motion vectors. Consequently, when the variable coding of a motion vector string is conducted by variable-coding the difference between two consecutive motion vectors, a motion vector is selected so that the code length of the motion vector string which has been variable-coded becomes short. As a result, an efficient picture compression processing can be realized.

Apparatus and method of detecting motion vectors by calculating a correlation degree between each candidate block

The address generation unit 166 generates a write address for each picture data to be written in the frame memory 169. The memory control unit 165 writes picture data which have the same Y address and consecutive X addresses to the first bank and the second bank alternately per one-page mode length, and further writes picture data which have the same X address and adjacent Y addresses to the different banks. The memory control unit 165 determines a minimum area which consists of an odd number of page mode lengths and includes picture data of a square area having the same Y address, and reads the determined area from the two storage areas alternately per Y address.

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Osaka, Japan

Akihiko Otani