Information recording medium and apparatus and method for recording and reproducing information

A data recording medium having a plurality of units with a fixed length for recording AV files each including the video data that is compressed in units of a picture on the variable-bitrate condition,

• wherein each of the AV files recorded on the data recording medium includes a plurality of chapter data including a plurality of GOP data, a plurality of first pointer data each having a plurality of first pointers, and at least one second pointer data having a plurality of second pointers;
• each of the GOP data includes one independent picture data that is intra-picture compressed and a plurality of dependent picture data that are inter-picture compressed;
• each of the first pointers is provided in a one-to-one correspondence to each of the independent picture data, and stores a location data of the corresponding independent picture data;
• each of the second pointers is provided in a one-to-one correspondence to each of the first pointer data and stores a location data of the corresponding first pointer data;
• and
• a hierarchical location data for retrieving the independent picture data is formed by the first pointers and the second pointers.