METHOD AND DEVICE FOR DETECTING HIERARCHICAL MOTION VECTOR

PURPOSE:To improve encoding efficiency by detecting a motion vector where an actual motion is reflected even when the plural motions are added in an input picture. CONSTITUTION:A current reduced picture frame 26 stored in a frame memory 12 is read with the value of an address signal 25 consisting of the two coordinates of (x, y) as an address value and inputted to a small area dividing part 37. The small area dividing part 37 reads the kXj number of block data from the present frame reduced picture 26, divides read data into (k/(m1Xm2))X(j/(n1Xn2)) number of blocks and, then, calculates the characteristic quantity of the respective blocks to integrate the blocks by comparing them. An integrated present frame block signal 43, the reading start address (the address corresponding to the extreme left-upper picture element in the block) of outputted block data and an integration block information 55 indicating the mutually integrated blocks are outputted. The small area dividing part 38 executes a similar processing.