the present invention relate to method and apparatus for processing a video signal to decode data previously encoded into the video signal . one aspect of the invention relates to a method for detecting a first line of a data sequence encoded in a digital video signal by scanning a digital video signal by line to look for an intelligent signal detect word . if the detect word is not found , a counter is incremented . scanning continues until the intelligent signal detect word is found , and once found flagging that line as a first data line . another aspect of the invention is a decoding apparatus that searches the plurality of horizontal scan lines in a video signal for the presence of a data start key , and when such a data start key is found , the line containing the data start key is identified as the first line of the encoded data .