To reduce an encoding quantity regarding movement by detecting whether or not respective blocks belong to respective areas in accordance with a predetermined search order based on the one block belonging to each area as a starting point.

A divided information encoding circuit 101 encodes information on block division outputted by a block division/area information storage means of a movement detecting circuit 7a. Namely, a code indicating whether each large block is divided into small blocks is outputted. Then an area information encoding circuit 102 encodes area information outputted from the block division/ area information storage means, i.e., information on blocks constituting each area. For the encoding, when respective blocks belong to each area, a code indicating that they belong to the area is outputted in the same search order with the procedure of the movement information detecting means and when not, a code indicating that they do not belong to the area is outputted.