US Patent 7953281 Encoded image signal conversion method and apparatus

A transcoding method and apparatus designed to reduce, with a high picture quality, the computation processing volume required for transcoding are provided. A recording and reproduction apparatus 100 includes an encoder 101, a transcoder 102, an intermediate information storage memory 105, a stream storage memory 106, a compression expansion means 107, an input image storage memory 108, and a user interface 110. When performing encoding in an encoder 104 with a second compressive encoding method, the intermediate information is read from the intermediate information storage memory 105, processed into a utilizable format, and utilized during encoding with the second compressive encoding method.