A video-signal recording and playback apparatus for recording and playing back a video signal of a television-broadcast program include a recording mechanism for recording a video signal onto an information-recording medium; an extracting mechanism for extracting a representative picture from a video signal to be recorded; an attaching mechanism for attaching an evaluation value to a representative picture extracted by the extracting mechanism; a preserving mechanism for preserving a representative picture extracted by the extracting mechanism in the information-recording medium; and a thinning mechanism for carrying out a thinning process on a number of representative pictures preserved by the preserving mechanism in the information-recording medium on the basis of the evaluation value attached by the attaching mechanism.