IMAGE CODING DEVICE AND METHOD THEREFOR, AND IMAGE DECODING DEVICE AND METHOD THEREFOR

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To attain a decoding operation even in the middle of a coding stream by setting a header information presence/absence flag to the header of a lower rank hierarchy and including the header information of the higher rank hierarchy into the header of the lower rank hierarchy, only when the flag shows the inclusion of the header information on the higher rank hierarchy. SOLUTION: A variable length coder of an encoder sends the latest data on header information on hierarchies VS, VISO, VO and VOL, which configure a coding bit stream of an MPEG 4 to a buffer of a GOV header. A header information presence/absence flag is set to the GOV header and a person in charge of the encoder writes the buffer contents into the GOV header of a recording medium 201 or a transmission medium 202, when '1' is set in advance. An IVLC device 22 of the decoder detects the header information presence/ absence flag out of the data on the medium 201 or 202 and reads the header information on a higher rank hierarchy from the GOV header to send the header information to a necessary block, when the flag is set at '1'.