Patent ID: 8660189

Claim:
A generation apparatus which generates a stream and other information, the stream including (i) a flag indicating an encoding scheme for a macroblock constituting a picture, (ii) mode information indicating a unit of data to which the flag is added, and (iii) an encoded picture, said generation apparatus comprising: a hardware processor; a determination unit operable to determine a continuous unit to be seamlessly and continuously reproduced, the continuous unit including a plurality of pictures; a first information adding unit operable to add the mode information to each of the pictures in the continuous unit, the mode information indicating one of (i) mode 1, which requires the flag to be added and encoded in each macroblock header of the continuous unit, (ii) mode 2, which requires, for each respective picture of the pictures in the continuous unit, the flag to be added to the respective picture and encoded, and (iii) mode 3, which allows the flag to be added and encoded according to mode 1 or mode 2, wherein mode 1 requires a low processing capability and mode 2 requires a high processing capability, and wherein the mode indicated by the mode information is fixed for the entire continuous unit; a second information adding unit operable to add the flag on a macroblock-by-macroblock basis when the mode information indicates mode 1, and operable to add the flag on a picture-by-picture basis when the mode information indicates mode 2; a generating unit operable, via the hardware processor, to encode the picture to generate the stream; and a management information generation unit operable to generate a playlist indicating a reproducing order of one or more reproduction segments that are a whole or a part of the generated stream, wherein the encoding scheme includes at least one of a scheme of encoding the macroblock as a skip macroblock and a scheme of encoding the macroblock as a direct mode macroblock, and wherein the playlist includes, for each of the one or more reproduction segments, information indicating that the mode information is added to each picture in the continuous unit.