Patent ID: 7995903

Claim:
A data recording and reproducing apparatus which records and reproduces a video signal or an audio signal to and from a recording medium, the data recording and reproducing apparatus comprising: a transcoding module which transcodes a video signal or an audio signal, which has been recorded on the recording medium, to a video signal or an audio signal that is compressed by another compression method; and a control module which controls the transcoding processing of the transcoding module, wherein: the control module extracts a time zone (T 1 ) in which both recording and transcoding are not scheduled, and selects the time zone (T 1 ) as a first candidate of a time zone in which the transcoding processing is to be executed; the control module extracts a time zone (T 2 ) in which a broadcast program whose frequency of recording is high is searched from among broadcast programs recorded in the past, or in which, if keyword automatic recording has been performed in the past, a broadcast program which includes frequently used keywords is searched, and selects the time zone (T 1 -T 2 ) in which the extracted time zone (T 2 ) is subtracted from the time zone (T 1 ) as a second candidate of the time zone in which the transcoding processing is to be executed; and the control module assigns the execution of the transcoding to the combination of the first and the second candidates of the time zone, so that the assigned time zone is sufficient for the length of time required to transcode the target broadcast program.