Motion vector estimating device and motion vector estimating method

To provide a motion vector estimating device and a motion vector estimating method which are capable of estimating motion vectors with a high accuracy while reducing the processing amount. The picture coding apparatus includes: a picture reducing unit which generates a reduced picture to be coded and a reduced reference picture based on an input picture including a current block and a reference picture, an area dividing unit which divides the reduced picture to be coded into plural areas, an area motion vector estimating unit which estimates, for each area, an area motion vector with respect to the reduced reference picture, a correlation calculating unit which calculates the correlation of each area motion vector, a correlation calculating unit which calculates, for each area, the correlation of the area motion vector, a search range determining unit which determines the information about the motion vector search range based on the area motion vectors and the correlations of the area motion vectors, and a coding unit which has a motion estimating unit. The motion estimating unit determines motion vector search ranges and estimates motion vectors.