An image data compression device includes a quantization part quantizing
image data with a quantization step that varies based on a quantization
parameter, a FIFO buffer part buffering quantized data of a plurality of
frames, a coded data formation part reading out the quantized data from
the FIFO buffer part asynchronously with a writing to the FIFO buffer
part and generating coded data by encoding the quantized data, a rate
control part controlling a data size of the coded data by changing the
quantization step and a frame skip part skipping a generation process of
the image data. The rate control part calculates the quantization
parameter by using a predicted data size of the coded data of a previous
frame which is calculated from a data size of the quantized data of the
previous frame. The frame skip part performs the skip process if a frame,
in which the quantization parameter becomes larger than a skip threshold,
appears consecutively in a number of times which is equal or more than
the number of a skip succession threshold.