IMAGE CONTROL APPARATUS

An image control apparatus is capable of coding an image signal with increased efficiency for improved image quality. The image control apparatus has a comparison processing unit for carrying out at least one of a first comparison process to compare a motion vector with a threshold, a second comparison process to compare a motion-compensated predictive error with a threshold, and a third comparison process to compare a difference value produced by subtracting the motion-compensated predictive error from an interframe difference with a threshold, and a repetitive number control unit for adaptively controlling the number of repeated B pictures to be inserted into a stream based on the compared result of the comparison process which is carried out by the comparison processing unit.