A motion picture coding and decoding system is provided, which permits high picture quality to be obtained with less information amount than that in case of a system having the sole function of DCT coding, permits reduction of block distortion of reproduced picture and permits coding efficiency increase. One picture frame is divided into a plurality of blocks for block-by-block coding. At this time, discrete cosine transform (DCT) coding and intra-block non-transform coding (NTC) are adaptively switched one over to the other according to the character of pattern. In case of the intra-block non-transform coding, predictive values of block and quantizing width are transmitted. Each block is adaptively selected with sub block of frame construction or sub block of field construction.