Video communication apparatus

In a video conference between N parties, each video conferencing terminal produces a respective video signal comprising, in the case of the National Television Standard Committee (NTSC) standard, sixty fields per second. The input video signals are input to an analog multi-point control unit which selects every Nth field from each input video signal and derives therefrom a single output video signal also of sixty fields per second, in which consecutive fields are derived cyclically from each of the N input video signals in turn. The single output video signal is transmitted to each video conferencing terminal, which separates out the fields of the input video signals present in the single output video signal to provide N individual reduced field rate video signals each comprising 60/N fields per second and each having fields derived from a respective one of the input video signals.