Patent ID: 8184944

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium having recorded thereon one or more pieces of playlist information each for defining a playback section on a time axis of a digital stream, wherein each of the pieces of playlist information includes (a) information defining a pair of a playback start point and a playback end point on a time axis of a video stream and (b) a stream table that includes a plurality of stream entries corresponding one-to-one with a plurality of audio streams and that defines an order of the plurality of stream entries, in each stream table, the order of the stream entries indicates a priority, of each of the plurality of audio streams, to which a playback apparatus that plays back the recording medium refers when selecting an audio stream to play back synchronously with the video stream among the plurality of audio streams, each of the plurality of audio streams has been encoded in one of a mandatory format and an optional format, the mandatory format being an encoding format decodable by a playback apparatus with any version number, and the optional format being an encoding format decodable by a playback apparatus with a predetermined or higher version number, and in a first-type stream table included in a piece of first-type playlist information among the pieces of playlist information, a stream entry corresponding to an audio stream encoded in the optional format is immediately subsequent, in the order of the stream entries, to a stream entry corresponding to an audio stream encoded in the mandatory format, the audio stream encoded in the optional format and the audio stream encoded in the mandatory format having been encoded from a same audio source and having a same language code, the plurality of audio streams include a plurality of primary audio streams and one or more secondary audio streams, each stream entry corresponding to a respective one of the one or more secondary audio streams is associated with a piece of combination information that indicates, in a predetermined order, one or more stream numbers corresponding to one or more of the plurality of primary audio streams whose playback output is able to be mixed with a playback output of the secondary audio stream, and in each piece of combination information, the predetermined order of the one or more stream numbers indicates a priority, of each of the one or more primary audio streams, to which the playback apparatus that plays back the recording medium refers when selecting a primary audio stream to play back synchronously with the secondary audio stream, and a first stream number in the predetermined order of the one or more stream numbers is a stream number of a primary audio stream having been encoded in the mandatory format.