PURPOSE: To reduce the degradation of the picture quality in an animation image and to produce an image which has no motion unnaturalness by varying the vertical resolution of time direction low frequency range components corresponding to the amount of the animation.

CONSTITUTION: When a selector 103 applies a vertical low pass filtering 102 to the time direction low frequency range components, the selector separates it with a narrow band width vertical low pass filter 101 and a wide band width vertical low pass filter 102 and selects either one of them. And a motion area deciding circuit 107 generates a selection signal which discriminates a vertical high frequency range component case or a vertical low frequency range component case of the motion of the moving image using time direction high area components. If it is a vertical high frequency range component case, let the selector 103 to select the output of the narrow band width vertical low pass filter 101. If it is a vertical low frequency range component case, let the selector 103 to select the output of the wide band width vertical low pass filter 102. Therefore, a guard band for the time direction high frequency range components and the time direction low frequency range components is adaptively switched depending on the situation of the motion components. Thus, the degradation of the picture quality in an animation image is prevented.