COMMERCIAL SKIP FOR RECORDABLE MEDIA

A method and apparatus for controlling simultaneous recording and playing back of data onto a disc medium. In response to a user generated pause-resume command, the apparatus can firstly buffer in a writing buffer a plurality of video object units to be recorded onto a disc medium. In addition, the apparatus can selectively pause the buffering of additional video object units to the writing buffer to prevent the writing buffer from overflowing. Further, the apparatus can secondly buffer these additional video object units in a navigation pack buffer. In one arrangement, the size of the cells containing the video object units can be reduced thereby reducing the capacity requirements of the navigation pack buffer. Moreover, the apparatus can reduce the bit rate of the incoming bitstream containing the video object units. Alternatively, the navigation pack buffer and the writing buffer can be logically combined to form a single data storage medium.