Method of recording and reproducing multi-channel information on and from recording medium

A method of recording N-channel video signals and M-channel audio signals (N, M being natural numbers) includes the steps of periodically extracting the video signal for one unit period, thereby thinning out the video signal, for each of the N-channel video signals, in turn combining the extracted video signals by a time division multiplexing operation. The method also includes the step of coding each of the M-channel audio signals to form M code trains, compressing in time each of the M code trains by a factor of 1/M or less and dividing each of the M code trains into a plurality of blocks, successively combining each block from the M code trains by a time division multiplexing operation. The video and audio signal obtained by the above multiplex operations are recorded on a single recording medium.