Patent ID: 8639089

Claim:
An audio-video (AV) recording/playback apparatus comprising: an AV storage that records AV data in such manner as to require decoding for playback; an input stream controller that, in accordance with a first thread, temporarily stores the AV data, and transfers the AV data to the AV storage for recording therein; a key frame extractor that extracts key frames from the input stream controller, each of the extracted key frames being an I picture extracted by the key frame extractor upon occurrence of a scene change; a key frame temporary storage that stores the key frames extracted by the key frame extractor in parallel with the recording of the AV data in the AV storage; and a metadata generator that, in accordance with a second thread, obtains the key frames stored in the key frame temporary storage, and generates metadata including thumbnail images from the obtained key frames, wherein the second thread operates independent of and in parallel with the first thread, wherein the metadata generator operates independent of and in parallel with said recording of said AV data in said AV storage, wherein the key frames are stored in the key frame temporary storage in such manner that the metadata generator does not need to perform the decoding to process the key frames, and wherein the metadata generator generates the thumbnail images, independent of and in parallel with recording of said AV data in said AV storage, by converting the obtained key frames into an image file format with the information of address, size, and time stamp of each key frame.