PURPOSE: To adaptively obtain an image of high quality even at the time of the change of brightness of a picture by controlling the gain of a burst signal to be recorded in accordance with the level of a luminance signal.

CONSTITUTION: An integrating circuit consisting of a resistance 33 and a capacitor 34 is connected to the output of a clamping circuit 25, and a signal indicating an average brightness of the picture in each field is outputted and is given to the base of a pnp transistor TR 26. A comparator 30 outputs a signal S4. Since the signal S4 is given to the base of a TR 24, a gate pulse BP is not given to the TR 24 when the picture is bright. Consequently, the gain of the burst signal dependent upon a TR 20 is not changed when the picture is bright. As a result, the amplified burst signal is recorded only in a part of dark picture.