Apparatus for recording and reproducing band-compression coded video data

Claim 1

A video signal recording apparatus comprising; an orthogonal transformation means for dividing a video signal into a plurality of blocks and for transforming each of the plurality of blocks by orthogonal transformation to obtain a plurality of orthogonal transformed data blocks; a coding means for coding the plurality of orthogonal transformed data blocks by variable length coding to obtain a plurality of coded data blocks so that data quantity in a specific number of coded data blocks is constant; a formatting means for allocating the plurality of coded data blocks into a plurality of sync blocks each containing a sync signal, an identification data and coded data blocks; and a recording means for recording the plurality of sync blocks on a recording medium; wherein said formatting means includes; a block dividing means for dividing the plurality of coded data blocks into first and second groups; and a block distributing means for allocating the coded data blocks in said first and second groups to continuous first through third sync blocks such that coded data blocks in said first group are allocated to the first sync block sequentially in the order from coded data blocks corresponding to lowest frequency component of the video signal to coded data blocks corresponding to higher frequency components of the video signal, coded data blocks in said second group are allocated to the second sync block sequentially in the order from coded data blocks corresponding to lowest frequency component of the video signal to coded data blocks corresponding to higher frequency components of the video signal, and the remaining coded data blocks in said first and second groups are allocated to the third sync block, whereby coded data corresponding to lower frequency components of the video signal are always distributed in the first and second sync blocks.