Patent ID: 7444593

Claim:
A method of destructively editing a time based stream of information in a processing system, the method comprising: capturing the time based stream of information from an information source having a transfer rate into a storage of the processing system; partitioning in a first display area of a display of the processing system the time based stream of information into a first portion and a second portion, the first portion and the second portion being displayed as a first thumbnail and a second thumbnail in the first display area, wherein the first thumbnail includes a first reference referenced to a first segment of the time based stream of information stored in the storage and the second thumbnail includes a second reference referenced to a second segment of the time based stream of information stored in the storage; displaying in a second display area of the display of the processing system for authoring a presentation having a plurality of video clips in sequence, wherein each of the plurality of the video clips can be formed by selecting one of the thumbnails displayed in the first display area and placing the selected thumbnail into a particular location of the second display area; in response to a user input, playing in a third display area of the display the presentation authored in the second display area; selecting the first portion of the time based stream of information from the first display area; in response to receiving a user deletion command for deleting the first portion, determining whether there are multiple references from one or more video clips of the second display area and/or from thumbnails displayed in the first display area that are currently referenced to the first portion; and permanently deleting the first portion of the time based stream of information from the storage if there is no more than one reference currently referenced to the first portion, without examining storage capacity state, in response to the user deletion command such that the first portion is no longer stored on the storage and is thereby destructively edited; providing reference data corresponding to the stored time based stream information an wherein the selecting is by extracting the reference data from at least a portion of a reference, wherein the reference forms at least one new reference with reference data to the remaining time based stream of information, and wherein the extracted reference data is from a portion nested within the reference and the reference splits into a first new reference corresponding to the time based stream of information prior to the extracted reference data and a second new reference corresponding to the time based stream of information after the extracted reference data.