A surveillance camera system includes a multiplexer. The multiplexer
successively selects image data output from each surveillance camera one
by one so as to input the selected image data to an image recording
apparatus. The image data input to the image recording apparatus is
subjected to a compression process by a compression expansion circuit and
then, recorded on a hard disk. The compression process is performed on
the basis of a reference coefficient stored in a management list within a
memory. It is noted that a value capable of the image data to be
compressed up to a size within a target range is set as a reference
coefficient in an initialization process by a CPU. Furthermore, the
reference coefficient is sequentially renewed by the CPU at a recording
process.