Motion video signal processing for recording or reproducing – Local trick play processing – With randomly accessible medium
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-09
2001-06-12
Garber, Wendy R. (Department: 2715)
Motion video signal processing for recording or reproducing
Local trick play processing
With randomly accessible medium
C386S349000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06246829
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium driver suitable for application to a disc apparatus utilizing, for example a phase change type disc.
2. Description of the Related Art
A magneto-optical disc and a phase change type disc have been proposed as the reprogrammable recording media and in these reprogrammable recording media, when the number of times of writing operation increases, the recording layer is gradually deteriorated and finally safety for data writing can not be assured. The number of times of the writing operations which can no longer assure the safety of data writing, namely the writing operation life, is considerably expanded in a magneto-optical disc. However, the writing operation life of the phase change type disc is less than that of the magneto-optical disc.
As explained above, when the number of times of write operation reaches the writing operation life, safety of data writing can no longer be assured.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore it is an object of the present invention to expand the operation life of a recording medium by averaging the number of times of write operation to each address of the real data area of recording medium and also assure the safety of read data writing operation to the real data area.
The recording medium driver of the present invention writes, on the occasion of writing real data up to the final address of the real data area, the subsequent real data from the first address of the real data area and writes the real data writing times information indicating the number of times of write operation of the real data area into the management data area as the management data and also writes the write end address indicating the end of write operation into the management data area as the management data after the end of write operation of the real data to the real data area.
On the occasion of starting the writing of real data in the real data area, data writing is started from the address next to the address indicated by the write end address written into the management data area of a recording medium and the write end address is written as the management data into the management data area when the data writing is completed. Thereby, the writing of real data for the first address to the final address of the real data area of the recording medium can be averaged. The number of times of data writing is increased by one, for example, when the real data is written up to the final address of real data area and thereafter data is written again from the first address. Since the number of times of data writing operation is limited under the predetermined number of times, for example, under the operation life, safety of the real data writing operation for the real data area can be assured.
When the number of times indicated by the data writing number information recorded in the management data area of the recording medium exceeds the predetermined number of times prior to the real data writing to the real data area, writing of real data to the read data area where safety of data writing is not assured can be avoided, if a warning is issued, for example, by warning means or the recording medium is ejected from the apparatus body.
In the case where two or more management data areas are provided in the recording medium and the number of times of management data writing operation to the management data area under the attention is exceeding the predetermined number of times, for example, the operation life number, it is also possible to write the management data to the other management data area. In general, the number of times of management data writing operation to the management data area is higher than the number of times of data writing operation to the real data area, but when two or more management data areas are provided and sequential transfer is made to the effective management data areas, safety of the management data to be written into the management data areas can be assured. In this case, it is also possible that the transfer flag is written in order to indicate whether the effective management data area is shifted or not to the next management data area of the recording medium and thereby the effective management data area can be discriminated by checking the transfer flag of each management data area, for example, at the time of loading of the recording medium.
Moreover, it is also possible that a recording flag is written into the management data area of the recording medium to correct, when the recording flag is ON, the real data writing number information and management data writing number information to be increased by one, for example, at the time of loading the recording medium or the recording flag is turned ON when the recording flag is OFF. Thereby, it can be covered that the recording medium is ejected from the apparatus without rewriting of the management data to the management data area of the recording medium, in the case where the medium is ejected by means of the high speed eject means, for example. Accordingly, when the management data for the management data area of the recording medium is updated, the recording flag is reset to the OFF state.
Moreover, the recording medium may be a disc type recording medium such as magnetic disc, magneto-optical disc and phase change type disc. In this case, access can be made easily to the management data area and real data area and when the real data is started to be written to the real data area, the writing can easily be started from the address next to the write end address. As the real data to be written into the real data area of the recording medium, an video data corresponding to the video signal obtained by processing the image pickup signal output from an image pickup element may be used. For example, in the case of recording an image without any selection, amount of video data to be written to the real data area of the recording medium becomes very large but, as explained above, the operation life of the recording medium can be extended by writing the video data in average up to the final address from the start address of the real data area of the recording medium.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5239426 (1993-08-01), Sakaegi
patent: 5835670 (1998-11-01), Hirayama et al.
patent: 5907446 (1999-05-01), Ishii et al.
Garber Wendy R.
Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neusadt, P.C.
Onuaru Christopher
Sony Corporation
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