PLAYBACK APPARATUS

A control information decoding section (102) decodes sets of control information contained in a stream. Further, a random access information analyzing section (101) carries out analysis of locations of random access points of media items contained in the stream, on the basis of the sets of control information. Still further, a management information generating section (103) generates management information for managing a plurality of random access points contained in the stream, on the basis of decoded versions of the sets of control information, which has been obtained by the control information decoding section (102), and the locations of the random access points obtained by the analysis performed by the random access information analyzing section (101). Then, the management information thus generated and the stream are recorded onto a storage medium (104). This makes it possible to quickly start playback in performing random-access playback of a stream into which control signals are inserted at regular intervals.