US Patent 7432960 Image generating apparatus and image generating method

To generate motion picture image data making full use of the characteristics of a photographed image such as a high resolution and a high rate fetching (high frame rate), an image pickup apparatus comprises a camera unit for photographing a subject at predetermined time intervals and generating image pickup data and an encoding unit for encoding the image pickup data as motion picture image data having an image rate which is based on the predetermined time intervals. An optimum motion picture stream is output by changing the output mode of the encoded motion picture image data output from the encoding unit according to the number of photographing pixels in the camera unit and the image rate.