Method and apparatus for partial file delete

• US 20040091239A1
• Filed: 11/03/2003
• Published: 05/13/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Saturn Licensing LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.), Sony Electronics Inc. (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Ryal, Kim Annon, Poslinski, Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 7,889,973 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 386/297
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/76 Television signal recording
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/781 on disks or drums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/7921 for more than one processing mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8042 involving data reduction

Abstract

A method of increasing the available storage space on an electronic storage medium comprising the steps of providing a free memory list for the electronic storage medium; selecting a portion of a file stored on the electronic storage medium; and adding the selected portion of the file to the free memory list. A method of increasing the available storage space on a personal video recorder comprising the steps of storing a media file on a memory of the personal video recorder; receiving a signal for marking a starting flag for the media file; receiving a signal for marking an ending flag for the media file; and freeing the memory of the personal video recorder that contains a portion of the media file between the starting flag and the delete flag.

Claims

1. A method of increasing the available storage space on an electronic storage medium comprising the steps of:

providing a free memory list for the electronic storage medium;

selecting a portion of a file stored on the electronic storage medium; and

adding the selected portion of the file to the free memory list.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the file is an audio file or a video file.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the selecting the portion of the file stored on the electronic storage medium creates a plurality of file segments.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising the step of linking the plurality of file segments together.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the file is a video file.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the electronic storage medium is a memory of a personal video recorder.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the electronic storage medium is a memory of a personal video recorder.

8. A method of increasing the available storage space on a personal video recorder comprising the steps of:

storing a media file on a memory of the personal video recorder;

receiving a signal for marking a starting flag for the media file;

receiving a signal for marking an ending flag for the media file; and

freeing the memory of the personal video recorder that contains a portion of the media file between the starting flag and the delete flag.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the freeing of the memory of the personal video recorder comprises deleting the portion of the media file between the starting flag and the ending flag.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the freeing of the memory of the personal video recorder comprises deallocating the memory of the personal video recorder containing the portion of the media file between the starting flag and the ending flag.

11. The method of claim 8 wherein the marking of the start flag comprises marking a first presentation time stamp and wherein the marking of the end flag comprises marking a second presentation time stamp.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

associating a first full frame image with the first presentation time stamp;

associating a second full frame image with the second presentation time stamp.

13. A method of increasing the available storage space on a personal video recorder comprising the steps of:

searching for a start program time stamp marking a video file;

searching for a first full image frame related to the start program time stamp;

searching for an end program time stamp marking the video file;

searching for a second full image frame related to the end program time stamp; and

deleting a portion of the video file between the first full image frame and the second full image frame.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of deleting a portion of the video file creates a plurality of video segments.

15. The method of claim 14 further comprising combining the plurality of video segments into a second video file.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the deleting comprises removing at least a portion of a commercial within the video file.