PURPOSE: To realize real-time color recording and to reduce the cost by providing a thermal transfer film formed by coating a beltlike sheet with plural kinds of color ink and uniting it with a heat head.

CONSTITUTION: Data of input signals S1WS3 passed through a multiplexer 11 are recorded in a memory 14 by single-time sampling operation through an A/D converter 12 under the control of a CPU 13. The 1st color part of the thermal transfer film 1, i.e. yellow is set at the position of the heat head 2 firstly in printing operation according to said data. Then, data which is required firstly is read out of the memory 14, and the head 2 is moved from the film 1 to a position corresponding to the data and put in operation through a heat head driving circuit 16 to record the yellow of the film 1 on recording paper 3. Then, similar processing is performed for the 2nd and the 3rd colors of the film and recording by one sampling operation is completed. Then the recording paper 3 is fed once for next recording, which is carried out similarly.