A digital video signal that has been encoded using motion-compensated prediction, transform encoding, and variable-length coding, is decoded using parallel processing. Frames of the video signal are divided into slices made up of a sequence of macroblocks. The signal to be decoded is slice-wise divided for parallel variable-length decoding. Each variable-length-decoded macroblock is divided into its constituent blocks for parallel inverse transform processing. Resulting blocks of difference data are added in parallel to corresponding blocks of reference data. The blocks of reference data corresponding to each macroblock are read out in parallel from reference data memories on the basis of a motion vector associated with the macroblock. Reference data corresponding to each macroblock is distributed for storage among a number of reference data memories.