Patent ID: 8358915

Claim:
A method of retrieving information for managing video data, comprising: retrieving linking information for associating a metadata set with the video data and location information; and retrieving a metadata indicator for indicating whether the metadata set exists in a stream including the linking information, the metadata set being a set of metadata and an additional information describing the video data, and the linking information being used for identifying the metadata set associated with the video data, wherein the metadata set includes metadata having one of a plurality of predetermined formats, the location information indicates where the additional information is found, the metadata indicator indicates that the metadata set associated with the video data exists in the stream when the metadata indicator has a first metadata indicator value, the metadata indicator indicates that the metadata set associated with the video data does not exist in the stream when the metadata indicator has a second metadata indicator value, plural metadata sets are capable of being associated with a single video data, and the additional information can be provided in a synchronous manner with the video data.