MOVING PICTURE CODING/DECODING METHOD AND APPARATUS HAVING SPATIALLY SCALABLE ARCHITECTURE AND SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO SCALABLE ARCHITECTURE TOGETHER

A moving picture coding/decoding method and apparatus having a spatially scalable architecture and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scalable architecture together is provided. The coding method includes the steps of down sampling shape information and texture information by a predetermined ratio to construct a spatially scalable architecture including a single base layer and at least one enhancement layer; coding the shape and texture information of the base layer to generate a base layer bitstream, frequency transform coding the difference between decoded texture information and original texture information, and constructing a SNR scalable architecture based on frequency bands; and, with respect to each of the at least one enhancement layer, coding the difference between shape information upsampled from the base layer and the shape information of the enhancement layer to generate an enhancement layer bitstream, frequency transform coding the difference between the decoded texture information obtained and the texture information of the enhancement layer, and constructing a SNR scalable architecture based on frequency bands. Accordingly, various picture quality information of a different size can be provided with respect to an arbitrary shaped object through a single bitstream.