A method and an apparatus for recording and playing back monitored video data for recording monitored video data generated continuously for a long time on a magnetic tape, with less S/N degradation by shortening the operation time of the VTR to suppress the degradation of the magnetic tape, recording head, and other mechanical items, wherein video signals from a video camera are converted to digital signals in an A/D converter, compressed and encoded in a compression encoder & decoder circuit, then transferred to a time axis compression circuit including the first memory, the second memory, an SCSI controller, and a hard disk unit, thereafter compressed on the time axis and recorded on the magnetic tape loaded in a D-VHS standard VTR via an I/F circuit. Compressing the video data from the compression encoder & decoder circuit on the time axis in the time axis compression circuit makes shorter the recording time of the video data on the magnetic tape than the actual recording time of the video camera, whereby the VTR is only required to record video data intermittently on the magnetic tape and that a general home VTR can be adopted as the above VTR, moreover the magnetic tape itself is prevented from damages.