A rate conversion apparatus 10 includes a quantization parameter setting unit 107 and a rounding threshold value setting unit 108. The quantization parameter setting unit 107 determines a quantization parameter change amount according to a code amount of encoded data output from a variable length encoding unit 109 and a target code amount. The quantization parameter setting unit 107 adds a first quantization amount used in an image before conversion to the quantization parameter change amount, to generate a second quantization parameter to be used in re-quantization processing in a quantization unit 105. The rounding threshold value setting unit 108 sets the rounding threshold value according to the quantization parameter change amount. The quantization unit 105 performs re-quantization using the second quantization parameter and the rounding threshold value.