a camera adapted to produce a physical main stream of digital video data comprising sequentially ordered frames of digital video data;

a storage device comprising a plurality of physical memory locations;

a processor coupled to the camera and to the storage device, the processor adapted to read the frames of digital video data from the physical main stream of digital video data and to write the frames of digital video data to the physical memory locations of the storage device;

a record control coupled to the processor that, on activation, is adapted to cause the processor to begin to generate a logical main stream of video by so reading and writing the frames of digital video data, the logical main stream of video comprising a video time line defined by a start pointer and an end pointer, the start pointer being a logical pointer that is set to point to a first physical memory location to which a frame of digital video data from the physical main stream was written, and the end pointer being a logical pointer that is continuously updated by the processor to point to a last physical memory location to which a frame of digital video data from the physical main stream was most recently written;

a physical video file creating control coupled to the processor that, on activation after activation of the record control, causes the processor to stop generating the logical main stream of video and to create a physical video file containing a sequence of frames of digital video data spanning from the start pointer to the end pointer, the physical video file being stored in a corresponding sequence of physical memory locations of the storage device;

a continue video control coupled to the processor and associated with an existing physical video file created by a previous activation of the physical video file creating control, wherein the continue video control, on activation after an elapsed time following the activation of the physical file creating control, causes the processor to resume recording to the existing physical video file by beginning to generate a new logical stream segment of video from a new physical stream segment of digital video data, the new logical stream segment of video comprising a new video time line segment defined by a new start pointer and a new end pointer, the new start pointer being a logical pointer that is set to point to a first physical memory location to which a newly recorded frame of digital video data from the new physical stream segment is written, and the new end pointer being a logical pointer that is continuously updated by the processor to point to a last physical memory location to which a newly recorded frame of digital video data from the new physical stream segment was most recently written, the new start pointer being determined by the end pointer of the existing physical video file;

wherein, on activation of the physical video file creating control after activation of the continue video control, the processor stops generating the new logical stream segment of video and creates a merged physical video file containing the frames of the existing physical video file and the newly recorded frames of digital video data appended thereto, so that the merged physical video file contains a sequence of frames of digital video data spanning from the start pointer of the existing physical video file to the new end pointer.