To provide a video recording and reproducing apparatus capable of suppressing occurrence of skew distortion while smoothing a motion of a reproduced video image.

A time lapse VTR 10 adopting the helical scanning system records PAL video signals at a rate of one field per 3 fields to attain triple long time video recording while driving a magnetic tape 20 at a 1/3 speed with respect to the speed in an ordinary video recording mode at recording. In this case, the VTR 10 controls the number of revolutions of a drum 26 so that the total number of horizontal lines in one track is 312.5+[1/3] lines. Then in reproduction, a correction circuit 42 individually delays the video signals so that the synchronization timing among the video signals by one field reproduced every time a rotary magnetic head 24 traces each track is made constant.