A video signal processing circuit of motion adaptive type includes a circuit for identifying motion of a picture in a video signal on the basis of a difference signal between at least a line signal appearing in an M-th field and a corresponding line signal appearing in an (M-1)th field so that, when a scanning line produced on the basis of the video signal is interpolated between scanning lines of the video signal to improve the picture quality, a signal for interpolating said scanning line is produced in a different manner depending on whether a portion of the video signal to the displayed is a still picture or a moving picture. The motion identifying circuit comprises a horizontal filter spreading the difference signal in the horizontal direction, a circuit delaying the output signal of the horizontal filter by one field after attenuation, a line memory delaying the output signal of the attenuating and delaying circuit by one line, and an output circuit generating a signal identifying the motion of the picture on the basis of the output signals of the horizontal filter, attenuating and delaying circuit and line memory.