Image processing apparatus and image processing method

An image processing apparatus comprising:

• a determination unit which determines whether or not motion information of a neighboring region located around a current region is available for being used to decode motion information of the current region to be processed;
• a decoding unit which decodes encoded motion information of the current region by using available motion information of a neighboring region in place of the motion information of the current region;
• a candidate setting part which, when motion information of a neighboring region to be a candidate for predictive motion vector information of the current region is unavailable, sets available motion information of another neighboring region as the candidate in place of the motion information;
• and
• a predictive motion vector reconstruction part which uses any of the candidates set by the candidate setting part to reconstruct the predictive motion vector information of the current region,
• wherein the candidate setting part sets a co-located region of the neighboring region determined to be unavailable by the determination unit as the candidate when the co-located region is available.

A method of processing an image in an image processing apparatus, the method comprising:

• determining whether or not motion information of a neighboring region located around a current region is available for being used to decode motion information of the current region to be processed;
• decoding encoded motion information of the current region by using available motion information of a neighboring region in place of the motion information;
• setting a co-located region of the neighboring region, determined to be unavailable, as a candidate when the co-located region is available;
• and
• decoding merge information using set candidates.