Abstract: In a method of encoding a television signal in accordance with a plurality of operations each providing another distribution of temporal and/or spatial distribution, at least one of said operations including estimation of motion vectors for first frames out of pairs of television frames and/or estimation of pointers to motion vectors for second frames out of said pairs of television frames, said method further comprising encoding a digitally assisting signal into binary codewords comprising informations about said motion vectors, said pointers and/or according to which one of said plurality of operations the television signal is encoded, a Hamming-distance between a first codeword indicating an operation providing a maximum spatial resolution, and a second codeword indicating an operation providing a maximum temporal resolution, is at least one half the number of bits of each codeword, so that a fail-safe and efficient method is obtained.