MOVING IMAGE ENCODING APPARATUS

In a moving image encoding apparatus of this invention, a generated bit amount extracting section (21) counts generated bits of variable-length-encoded data in units of macroblocks, and a reference generated bit count is set in a parameter value control section (22) as an update condition for a parameter value in each block. The boundary value of the parameter value is set in an intra/inter determination section (23) as a criterion for selection of the intra-encoding mode. In the inter-frame encoding mode, the parameter value control section (22) updates the parameter value of a block in which the generated bit count value of encoded data obtained by the generated bit amount extracting section (21) exceeds a reference value. The intra/inter determination section (23) determines that the influence of a data error is large in a block in which the parameter value is continuously updated and exceeds the boundary value, and switches the current mode to the intra-encoding mode to perform refresh operation.