Necessity of real-time metadata collection

For many years the demand to record both instrumentation and reconnaissance data was satisfied by high-end ruggedized digital tape recorders, notably the Ampex DCRsi. In recent years other technologies such as solid state and disk have entered the market. These technologies overcome the sequential access limitation of tape (albeit at a significantly higher data storage cost) which could be a benefit depending on the application and implementation. This paper describes the key differences between instrumentation and reconnaissance (imagery) recording and shows: That instrumentation recording is inherently a sequential process itself, That current disk and solid-state recorders are yet limited by what is in effect a sequential interface. That imagery recording could benefit substantially from random access, but only after enhancing the interface, and That an image logger (herein defined) provide a superior method for recording imagery.