I had given the text on those buttons a lot of thoughts because of the potential for confusion.
Which one are you referring to?
When you select a program and choose "Record" (i.e. record the program), you get a settings dialog (unless you choose not to be bothered by it in general settings). On this dialog, there are three buttons that are not settings themselves- "Record (save settings to this recording only)", "Record (save to defaults)", and "Cancel (recording will not be scheduled)". Here the Cancel button is to cancel the entire recording action.
When you select a program and choose "Subscribe" (to set up subscription), you get three buttons that are not subscription settings themselves - "Cancel (recording will not be scheduled)", "Subscribe (and save settings as defaults)", and "Subscribe (only apply to this subscription)". I thought these are clear enough. There is also a "Edit General Recording Settings". If you choose that one, you will get another pop up which is nearly identical to the one you get when you do "Record" (instead of Subscribe), with the exception that the "Cancel" button is renamed "Continue (abandon settings change)". This is to let you cancel the settings editing action, but will let you continue setting up subscription. Also there are no "Record" buttons. The "Record" buttons are renamed "Apply (...)" to indicate that you are just applying settings, and you will have more actions to take to complete subscription setup.
When you select a program and choose "Record by time", you get a dialog for record by time settings. Besides the settings for Record-by-time, you also get "Edit Settings" button, which brings up the settings pop up, just like in Subscription; and "Record" button which proceeds to finish setting up recording; and "Cancel (...)" which cancels recording setup.
Which one of these is confusion?