Video recording and/or reproducing apparatus that records a signal indicating aspect ratio

Claim 1

Recording and reproducing apparatus for respectively recording and reproducing on and from a recording medium a video signal having one of two possible aspect ratios, the apparatus comprising: a clamping circuit, a sync separator circuit, a format discriminating circuit, a clock signal generator circuit, a slicer circuit, a data decoder, a microcomputer, a data encoder, and an inserting circuit, wherein: a digital composite video signal is supplied to said clamping circuit, said sync separator circuit and said format discriminating circuit, said clamping circuit produces a clamped video signal output to said slicer circuit and said inserting circuit, said sync separator circuit produces a sync output signal to said slicer circuit and said inserting circuit, said format discriminating circuit produces a format discriminating output signal to said inserting circuit, said clock signal generator circuit produces a clock pulse output signal to said sync separator circuit, said data decoder and said data encoder, said slicer circuit produces an output to said data decoder, said data decoder produces an output to said microcomputer, said microcomputer produces an output to said data encoder, and said data encoder produces an output to said inserting circuit, and wherein: said inserting circuit modifies said video signal as recorded in response to said format discriminating output signal so as to enable identification of the aspect ratio upon reproduction of said video signal, said slicer circuit during reproduction supplies an addition data output signal to said data decoder, said data decoder during reproduction decodes said addition data, said microcomputer during reproduction determines the aspect ratio of the reproduced signal, and said data encoder generates an aspect ratio indicating signal during recording.