PURPOSE: To utilize correlation among picture elements within a screen and among the screens even near the boundary of areas, to prevent the degradation of encoding efficiency compared with a single encoder and to disperse picture quality degradation by a large information amount by providing overlapping area parts in respective small encoders and making a generated information amount be informed.

CONSTITUTION: Inputted picture signals 805 are encoded and codes 806 are outputted in the small encoders 1101 and the screens used for an encoding processing are held in two kinds of memories. One is the memory for storing encoded pictures and is made to correspond to the processing areas of the respective small encoders and the other one is the memory for storing reference pictures and is made to correspond to the area overlapping with the adjacent area which is made wider than the processing areas of the respective small encoders. The memories are provided inside the encoders 1101 similarly to a conventional case, a reference memory is provided inside a shared memory circuit 1102 and access from the encoders 1101 to the circuit 1102 is performed by signals 1103 and 1104.