| 摘要 |
The objective of the invention is to enable a favorable decoding process to be performed on a reception side. The image data of pictures constituting moving image data are encoded to generate a video stream (an encoded stream). In this case, the image data of the pictures constituting the moving image data are classified into a plurality of hierarchical layers and then encoded to generate the video stream having the image data of the pictures of the hierarchical layers. At this moment, the hierarchical configuration on the lower hierarchical layer side is equalized to the hierarchical configuration on the higher hierarchical layer side, and mutually corresponding pictures on the lower and higher hierarchical layer sides are grouped as respective sets and then sequentially encoded. This can reduce the buffer size and decoding delay, on a reception side, in performing a decoding process for the encoded image data of the pictures on the lower and higher hierarchical layer sides. |
