PICTURE ENCODING METHOD AND APPARATUS, PICTURE DECODING METHOD AND APPARATUS AND FURNISHING MEDIUM

摘要

A method for encoding the chrominance of the 4:2:2 format or the 4:4:4 format in a picture having the shape so that the 4:2:2 format and the 4:4:4 format can be used in MPEG4. To this end, a picture is divided into the background and an object and an encoder encodes in terms of a macro-block formed by blocks of luminance Y and blocks of chrominance Cr and Cb as a unit. The encoder has a VOP encoding unit 3 which selects the method of utilizing the shape information of the object depending on the chrominance format of the picture.