1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and system of format converting and recording, and more particularly to a method and system of format converting and recording for optical storage media.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The multimedia and various sound/video compressions have evolved rapidly in recent years as a result of the developments and trend in digital information, thus there are more and more applications between different formats and the reuse of the digital information. And specifically, the applications of the storage media (for instance, VCD and DVD) also have been expanding. In general, the recordable capacity and recording time of a VCD that uses an MPEG I technique is respectively 650 Megabyte (Mbyte) and 74 mins; and the VCD is applicable to save the content of such as karaoke player, PC interactive software or games. The recordable capacity and recording time of a DVD that uses an MPEG II technique is respectively 4.7 Gigabyte and 135 mins; and the DVD is further applicable to save the content of such as movies, high-quality audio files and PC.
With respect to the file format, a PC with a CD-ROM drive has the VCD and DVD directories shown in FIG. 1A, FIG. 1B and FIG. 1C. FIG. 1A schematically shows the diagram of conventional VCD directories, where the subdirectory VCD of the root directory includes INFO.VCD and ENTRIES.VCD, and subdirectory CDI (when used in red-book 1.1 and 2.0 version) are mandatory for a VCD, while others are optional. Specifically, the file INFO.VCD includes a navigation table, configured to record the main constitutive information of a VCD (for instance, a system identification for verifying a VCD, an edtion of the VCD format, a lookup table of tracks, and disc status flag). The file ENTRIES.VCD is configured to record the entry point table of the VCD tracks in response to the control requirement when playing (for instance, 2.0 version). The file PSD.VCD is configured to record the play procedure and information of the selection list and play list for sequentially reproducing the animations, still frames and audio files in accordance with the play sequence descriptor (i.e. PSD). The CDI subdirectory is configured to record the application programs that are required when reproducing in a CD-I (interactive-media) player. Besides, the subdirectory MPEGAV includes some animations and video files called AVSEQ.DAT; the subdirectory CDDA includes some audio files called AUDIO.DAT; the subdirectory SEGMENT includes various segment reproducing files called ITEM.DAT; and the subdirectory KARAOKE includes the title of artists, the country of the karaoke.
FIG. 1B schematically shows the diagram of conventional DVD-RW directories. The subdirectory DVD_RTAV (i.e. real-time audio video) of the root directory includes the files, such as VR_MANGR.IFO, VR_MOVIE.VRO, VR_STILL.VRO and VR_AUDIO.VRO; wherein the file VR_MANGR.IFO (i.e. video recording manager information) includes a navigation table, which is configured to record the DVD management information such as programs, entry points of DVD tracks and play list.
FIG. 1C schematically shows the diagram of conventional DVD+RW directories. The subdirectory VIDEO_TS of the root directory includes the files, such as VIDEO_TS.IFO, VIDEO_TS.VOB, VIDEO_TS.BUP; wherein the file VIDEO_TS.IFO (i.e. video title set information) includes a navigation table for saving various management information of the DVD+RW.
As the requirement of the storage capacity for multimedia increases, however, it is a trend to use DVD as a data storage medium while VCD and DVD both are optical storage media for recording video and audio information. Accordingly, concerning data compatibility, data share and easy manageability, it becomes a trendy and practical method to use video/audio equipments having recording function for VCD/DVD format converting and data recording. Besides, there are some problems in the conventional recording method for disc data. First, in the recording process, since the disc data is sequentially played to a display or a storage device (for instance, hard discs) and then burned, and therefore we cannot add any control information of chapters (for instance, items of a VCD, cells of a DVD), but continuously using a suspend action by users for achieving the requirement of dividing into chapters. The above-mentioned method is not only inconvenient to users, but also fails to use the playback method to monitor the burning results in the recording process. Second, while watching the video without chapters as recorded in conventional way, the users have no benefits of jumping between the chapters.