Abstract: A video signal recorder/reproducer is used to record and/or reproduce pulse signals in successive tracks on a record medium. During recording, the pulse signals, which may, as one example, represent audio information, are interleaved with simulated horizontal and vertical synchronizing signals of the type similar to the synchronizing signals which normally are included in a composite video signal. During signal reproduction, the reproduced simulated horizontal and vertical synchronizing signals are detected and used to control the recovery of data from the reproduced pulse signals.

Abstract: Blocks of digital words containing an error correcting word are time interleaved into time-interleaved blocks of words, each of which contains no more than one word from any one of the original blocks. The time-interleaved blocks of words are converted to a bit-by-bit serial digital data stream which is time-base compressed to permit insertion therein of an error detecting code word and synchronizing signals. The resulting serial data stream may be recorded on a VTR. After reproduction, each time interleaved block is checked for errors and is then time de-interleaved to reconstruct the original blocks of digital words. If one or more errors exist in words in a time-interleaved block, no more than a single word in any one of the time de-interleaved blocks contains an error. Single-word errors in a reconstructed block are corrected using the error correcting word accompanying the reconstructed block.

Abstract: Described is a method for PCM signal recording in which, when single-channel or multichannel PCM signals are recorded so that one-channel PCM signals are recorded in plural recording tracks, the input PCM signals of one channel are correspondingly distributed to the plural recording tracks with at least one word as a unit, and in which the distributed plural signals are subjected to an encoding operation independently of one another and are recorded on the plural recording tracks. In distributing the input PCM signals by word units, word groups consisting of a predetermined number of consecutive words are sequentially distributed to the recording tracks, or plural consecutive words equal in number to the number of recording tracks are distributed to the tracks.