Abstract: Conventional composite color video signals are re-formatted into a compressed serial format on a line-by-line basis, by sampling the luminance and chrominance components at a predetermined sampling rate and serially arranging the sampled components on a line-by-line basis to form compressed re-formatted video lines, each containing a pair of serially arranged groups of samples, one of the pair of groups containing luminance samples, the other of the pair of groups containing chrominance samples, the groups being compressed in accordance with a predetermined ratio. The separated luminance and chrominance components of the original video signals are sampled at first and second frequencies f1 and f2, which are related by the expression f2=f1/N where N is the predetermined ratio.