Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Hiroaki Aono

Katsuji Aoki

Akiyoshi Tanaka

Yasuhiro Kikuchi

Kosuke Kubota

Yasuhiko Watanabe

A moving image coding method and its apparatus are disclosed, in which a frame of input image is divided into N regions so that each boundary may be short, one of the divided regions is selected in an arbitrary sequence in every frame to be coded, the coding mode is determined as intra-frame coding in this selected region, and the coding mode is determined by the characteristic of the frame image in other regions so as to code according to this coding mode.

Moving image coding method and apparatus, and moving image coding and decoding system

In a motion vector detection apparatus which processes a plurality of candidate blocks of pixels defined in a search range within a reference frame, to detect a candidate block having maximum correlation with an object block of M.times.N pixels in an object frame, a first input circuit receives successive pixels of the object block in respective clock periods and transfers each pixel to a specific one of a set of M.times.N processor circuits, while a second input circuit receives successive pixels of the search range and transfers each to a specific one of the processor circuits, such that the pixel values of a candidate block are respectively sequentially processed by each of the processor circuits in successive clock periods, with difference values between corresponding object and candidate block pixel values, generated by respective processor circuits, being cumulatively added to obtain an inter-block error value for that candidate block.

Motion vector detection circuit

A scanning-line interpolation apparatus for an image represented by a plurality of blocks of picture elements, provided with a motion vector detecting circuit for detecting an inter-frame motion vector of each block of an image represented by image information of a succeeding field, from image information of preceding and succeeding fields, a judgement circuit for generating and outputting predetermined data by using a detected motion vector of each block of the succeeding field and motion vectors of corresponding neighboring blocks thereof, a mixer circuit for outputting an interpolation signal obtained by mixing an inter-field interpolation signal representing an image obtained by moving another image represented by image information of the preceding field by a distance, which is one-half the magnitude of the detected motion vector of each block of the image represented by the image information of the succeeding field, in the direction of the motion vector with an intra-field interpolation signal representing an image obtained by performing an interpolation of scanning lines of a current field by using only image information of the current field at a mixing ratio, which is changed according to the predetermined data output from the judgement circuit, and a non-interlaced signal output circuit for outputting a non-interlaced signal obtained from the interpolation signal and a signal representing the image information of the current field.

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Kawasaki, Japan

Hiroaki Aono