Coding apparatus, coding method, program and information recording medium that can suppress unnatural degradation of image quality

A coding apparatus comprising:

• a coding process unit to perform one of a field-based coding process and a frame-based coding process with respect to an interlaced image;
• and
• a selection unit to determine which of the field-based coding process and the frame-based coding process is to be performed based on a magnitude relationship between a scaling factor designated by a user and a predetermined value;
• wherein said frame-based coding process is to perform a 9×7 wavelet transform on each frame image, perform a quantization process using a quantization step number calculated based on the scaling factor designated by the user and a basic quantization step number with respect to each subband of each component, and perform an entropy coding on all bit planes of coefficients after quantization;
• said field-based coding process is to perform the 9×7 wavelet transform on each field image, perform a quantization process using a quantization step number calculated based on the scaling factor designated by the user and a basic quantization step number with respect to each subband of each component, and perform an entropy coding on all bit planes of coefficients after quantization;
• and
• wherein said selection unit is to compare a quantization step number at a high decomposition level with a threshold value so as to select the field-based coding process when the quantization step number exceeds the threshold value and select the frame-based coding process when the quantization step number does not exceed the threshold value.