The recording operation can be rapidly started and a notification about the operating state during the recording operation can be realized without adding a new component, whereby a target scene of a subject can be recorded reliably. When a video signal captured by a camera unit 10 is compressed and encoded and is recorded on a DV tape, a control unit 100 controls a compression/decompression unit 40 and a tape deck unit 60 to compress and encode the video signal and record as DV data without using compressed data already recorded on the DV tape. In other words, the control unit 100 controls the operation of compressing and encoding video data to be newly recorded in such a manner that compressed data already recorded on the DV tape is not read out, thus reducing the time until recording of the video data on the DV tape is started.