Digital video signal recording and reproducing apparatus and method for setting a number of compression blocks according to different operational modes

摘要

A digital video signal recording and reproducing apparatus and method wherein a basic block is constituted by a plurality of pixels of video signals. A picture data compressing unit effects data compression of the video signals so that a compression data quantity after data compression becomes a constant with respect to a compression block constituted by a plurality of the basic blocks, and the compressed data o the video signals are recorded on a data recording medium. A compression block setting sets a number of the basic blocks to constitute the compression block in response to different operation modes of the digital video signal recording and reproducing apparatus which are different in at least one of resolution of the video signals, recording time and data compression system, and controls the picture data compressing unit so that the number of the compression blocks of the video signals recorded on one track of the data recording medium after data compression by the picture data compressing unit becomes M in a first operation mode, where M is a positive integer, and the number of the compression blocks becomes a positive integer in each of the other operation modes.