To suppress the deterioration in the picture quality when an image that is inputted at a low rate is encoded by providing a means which reduces the quantity of information assigned to a predicted vector, a means which increases the code value assigned to a DCT coefficient and suppresses the deterioration in the picture quality, or the like.

A means is provided to smooth a diverged predicted vector based on the distribution of a predicted vector obtained for the compensation of movement that is used for encoding an input image together with a means which reduces the difference between the diverged predicted vector and its adjacent macro block and suppresses the quantity of information assigned to the predicted vector in accordance with the smoothing of the diverged predicted vector and a means which increases the code value assigned to DCT coefficients and suppresses the deterioration in the picture quality. For instance, this device is provided with an A/D conversion part 101, a frame memory 102, a predictive vector calculation part 103, a vector divergence deciding part 105, a predicted image generation part 106, a FIFO memory 104, a difference part 107, etc.