Patent ID: 8224161

Claim:
A reproducing method for reproducing after-recording-purpose data and a portion of main data from a recording medium, the recording medium storing the main data, the after-recording-purpose data, and play list information which are recorded thereon in a procedure comprising the steps of compressively encoding an audio signal into encoding-resultant audio data divided in units; compressively encoding a video signal into encoding-resultant video data by using MPEG encoding method divided in units; adding an audio time stamp for audio-video synchronous reproduction to every unit of the encoding-resultant audio data to generate time-stamp-added audio data; adding a video time stamp for audio-video synchronous reproduction to every unit of the encoding-resultant video data to generate time-stamp-added video data; multiplexing the time-stamp-added audio data and the time-stamp-added video data into main data; recording the main data on the recording medium; adding, to first after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data, a time stamp for reproduction synchronous with a portion of the main data by using MPEG system multiplexing method and identification information for identifying the first after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data to convert the encoding-resultant audio data in main data into second after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data; and recording the after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data and play list information on the recording medium, the play list information providing link between the main data and the second after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data, the reproducing method comprising: first step for reading out the play list information from the recording medium; second step for reading out desired main data and desired after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data from the recording medium in response to user's request by referring to the read-out play list information; third step for separating the read-out desired main data into desired main video data and desired main audio data; and fourth step for synchronously reproducing contents of the desired main video data and contents of the desired after-recording-purpose encoding-resultant data in response to time stamps therein.