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Apparatus for recording and/or playing back catalog information

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/625,735, filed on Jul. 24, 2003, now pending, which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/583,876, filed May 31, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,687,455, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/263,816, filed Mar. 8, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,741,800, which claims the benefit of Korean Application No. 98-7525, filed Mar. 6, 1998, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a field of optical recording and/or playback, and more particularly, to a storage medium storing audio data and catalog information related to the audio data and an apparatus and method for recording and/or playing back catalog information.

2. Description of the Related Art

In an optical recording and/or playback apparatus in which a digital versatile disk (DVD) is used as a storage medium, a catalog function, and an apparatus or method for performing the catalog function has not been proposed.

Here, the contents of the audio include the record contents, the composer, the artist and/or performer, etc. Particularly, the catalog is additional data for illustrating the contents of the audio which is main data recorded on the storage medium, including such additional information as still pictures and captions as video information.

The catalog information which is played back in a playback apparatus having a video decoder, preferably, has an inspecting function for reading the desired contents of the catalog, without interfering with the playback of the audio.

It is also preferable that the catalog information can be easily manufactured using an established editing system for DVD-Video.

In order to satisfy the above-described conditions, two types of information, i.e., audio and catalog data, which perform different functions in a storage medium must be simultaneously played back. Thus, even when the audio data is played back at the maximum transmission speed of the playback apparatus, a predetermined amount of the catalog information must have already been played back and stored in a temporary storage, so that both the audio and the catalog contents can be simultaneously played back.

That is, when the storage medium, in which information for forming the catalog is stored, is inserted into a driver, a player or an editor, the catalog information stored in the storage medium is read and stored in a temporary storage, i.e., a memory, to be output in the form of an image if necessary. Here, in order to store the catalog information read from the storage medium, in the memory, the image size must be defined, and further a method for effectively using the memory must be provided.

It is also preferable that navigation information, which has been proposed in the DVD-Video, i.e., search information added to the catalog information such that a user can search an arbitrary catalog page, and a specification for processing the search information be provided. Further, an editing system manufacturing a catalog corresponding to the specification shares with an editing system according to the DVD-Video specification.

Here, the DVD-Read Only Memory (ROM) is a record medium defined by the physical specification of Part 1 of a DVD specification for a read-only disk produced by Toshiba Corporation and other companies (the DVD forum) in August, 1996 and the file system specification of Part 2 thereof. Also, the DVD-video means video edited by an image information recording method defined by the video specification of Part 3 thereof or a DVD-ROM disk in which the video is recorded.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a storage medium for storing catalog information to satisfy the above-described conditions.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a playback apparatus and method for reading desired catalog contents from catalog information related to audio data, while the audio data stored in a DVD disk is played back.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a recording apparatus and method for writing catalog information related to audio data and catalog contents in a DVD disk.

It is still another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for automatically accessing the location of the catalog using real-time playback information extracted from audio data to be played back without a command to read the catalog in a predetermined location, while audio data stored in a DVD disk is played back.

Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.

Accordingly, to achieve the above and other objects of the present invention, there is provided a storage medium randomly accessible and storing audio data and catalog information which is related to the audio data and stored in a predetermined region of the storage medium.