Patent ID: 7502543

Claim:
A data transmission apparatus, comprising: a read section operable to read a data stream and its management information from a recording medium; a control section operable to determine a portion of the management information that corresponds to a portion of the data stream and which is used for reproducing at least one specified reproduction interval in the portion of the data stream, the portion of the management information including a real playlist and at least one virtual playlist, the real playlist having all reproduction intervals in the portion of the data stream, the at least one virtual playlist having at least a portion of the reproduction intervals of the real playlist, the real playlist defining a reproducible range of the portion of the data stream such that deletion of one or more of the reproduction intervals of the real playlist prevents reproduction of the deleted reproduction intervals whereas deletion of one or more of the portion of the reproduction intervals in the virtual playlist does not prevent their reproduction; a transmission section operable to transmit the portion of the data stream and the portion of the management information; wherein the data stream is an AV stream and the management information includes address information of a discontinuity point of encoded information in the AV stream, information for relating time information in the AV stream with the address information, and time information of a characteristic image in the AV stream, and the management information is Clip Information, the address information of the discontinuity point is a SequenceInfo and a ProgramInfo, the information for relating the time information with the address information is a CPI, and the time information of the characteristic image is a ClipMark.