Abstract: When a video signal including a component modulated onto a subcarrier (such as a PAL signal) is subjected to a non-linear pre-emphasis known for MAC signals, with the object of reducing the effects of noise encountered in transmitting the composite signal through an f.m. channel, problems of noise and differential gain remain. These problems are overcome by subjecting the composite signal to a filtering step, before application of the non-linear processing, so as to filter out the subcarrier, the chrominance subcarrier in a PAL signal, and to compand the chrominance sidebands. Preferably a notch filter is used which has a notch shaped as a Gaussian curve.