Patent ID: 8082257

Claim:
A recording and reproducing apparatus comprising: a mounting mechanism arranged to mount a recording medium; a recording and reproducing unit configured to record an image file on the recording medium and to reproduce the image file from the recording medium; a first creating unit configured to create a basic management file for reproducing a plurality of image files recorded on the recording medium, wherein the basic management file is different from the image file and includes a plurality of indexes, each index respectively corresponding to one of the plurality of image files recorded on the recording medium, and each index including an image type attribute corresponding to one of the plurality of image files, a respective index of a thumbnail corresponding to one of the plurality of image files, a respective index number corresponding to one of the plurality of image files, and a respective name corresponding to one of the plurality of image files, wherein the basic management file manages reading of each image file recorded on the recording medium; an instruction unit configured to issue an instruction to generate a group including at least one of the plurality of image files recorded on the recording medium; and a second creating unit configured to create a group management file for managing each image file included in the group based on the basic management file, wherein the group management file is different from the image file and the basic management file, and includes attributes indicating the group, an index number of the group, a number of members registered in the group, and respective index numbers of the indexes included in the basic management file corresponding to the plurality of image files included in the group, wherein a virtual directory hierarchy of the group is created using indexes of the group management file, wherein the second creating unit creates a new group management file every time the instruction unit issues the instruction to generate a new group, and wherein the recording and reproducing unit records the basic management file and the group management file on the recording medium where the image files are recorded.