Method and apparatus for reading digital data bursts comprising data clusters and cluster linking sectors

Abstract

There is provided a disc recording apparatus for recording digital data by an optical unit in such a manner that time compressed digital data are arranged into a plurality of clusters at an interval of a predetermined number of sectors, a cluster-linking sector having a length longer than an interleaving length is provided at each linking part of each cluster, and the digital data are subsequently interleaved and recorded on a disc-shaped recording medium so that interleaving at the time of data recording on the cluster-by-cluster basis is within the range of the cluster-linking sector. There is also provided a disc reproducing apparatus for reproducing digital data by an optical unit in which playback data are obtained by reproducing record data recorded on a disc-shaped recording medium in such a manner that a cluster-linking sector longer than an interleaving length is provided in a linking section of each cluster composed of a predetermined number of sectors, the resulting data is interleaved and recorded on the disc-shaped recording medium, and the playback data are deinterleaved and freed of the cluster-linking sectors so as to be stored transiently in a storage unit. Playback data are written in the storage unit when the data volume of playback data stored in the storage unit becomes smaller than a predetermined volume to maintain a readout space in the storage unit which is in excess of the predetermined data volume.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.