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| Subject: | RE: [gislist] Seeking Opinions on Lizardtech's MrSID |
| Date: |
11/06/2003 11:10:01 PM |
| From: |
Clive Poole |
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> Why is ECW the only choice?
Users can be the judge and are the best ones to do so. However on this point
it is clear that users haven't noticed our policy statement available from
our web site in relation to ECW and JPEG200. ECW is scheduled to be
published in the next major release of our SDKs and with that we will
provide SDKs that support JPEG2000. Our message has been drowned in the
unfortunate disagreement over a compression format. The company can stand on
its record since inception of supporting open image formats. The standard
.ERS format for instance is a simple BIL file. ECW was developed as the
platform for a our tool for integrating Imagery with enterprise geospatial
databases. In other words we sell a superb image integration tool called
Image Web Server that has solved
the challenge of being able to manage and handle even terabytes of image
data archives. We don't and never have sold compression. Our tools add extra
value and that is our differentiator. JPEG2000 will simply be another
challenge to incorporate. We will take our many developer years of
experience with the integration issue of imagery and consolidate that. It
is probably worth just capturing a few lines from our pdf's to explain our
policy for the next round of SDKs:
* Full source code (ECW)so you can port the ECW SDK to new platforms as
desired
* Full JPEG2000 read/write (in addition to ECW read/write capabilities)
> Why not JPEG200 (JP2)
As above we agree. However if you are looking at integration issues in a web
environment some will come to see that ECW within an Image Web Server
environment provides (and will continue to do so for some time) the most
cost effective and rapid deployment option for Enterprise Image integration
with other geospatial databases.
Cheers
Clive
Clive Poole
Regional Manager
Earth Resource Mapping - Asia Pacific
Level 2, 87 Colin St
West Perth, WA 6005
Phone 618 9388 2900
Fax 618 9388 2901
Mob 0409584892
Email clive.poole@ermapper.com.au
www.EarthEtc.com
www.ermapper.com
-----Original Message-----
From: gislist-bounces@lists.thinkburst.com
[mailto:gislist-bounces@lists.thinkburst.com]On Behalf Of Sonny Parafina
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 8:27 AM
To: dar@manifold.net: gislist@lists.thinkburst.com
Subject: RE: [gislist] Seeking Opinions on Lizardtech's MrSID
Why is ECW the only choice? Wouldn't moving to another vendor
implementation of wavelet compression put users at risk again?
Why not JPEG200 (JP2), which is based on an ISO standard? Leica/Erdas is
supporting JP2 and Mapping Science has put out GeoJP2.
The geospatial JP2 page is hosted at http://www.remotesensing.org/jpeg2000/
As for free and low cost tools, there are links on the page, including
support for it in Frank Warmerdam's GDAL. Kudos to Frank for yet another
contribution to the geospatial community.
Regards,
sonny
-----Original Message-----
From: gislist-bounces@lists.thinkburst.com
[mailto:gislist-bounces@lists.thinkburst.com]On Behalf Of Dimitri Rotow
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:26 PM
To: gislist@lists.thinkburst.com
Subject: RE: [gislist] Seeking Opinions on Lizardtech's MrSID
<snip>
It's clear that many users of MrSID now realize that not only is the format
held hostage by its new owners, they as users are being held hostage as
well. There is an easy solution for all this: switch to ECW. It's a good
format as I can attest from personal experience.
<snip>
Early next year I expect we will participate in an "Image Rescue" campaign
now being informally discussed within the public and private GIS community
to rescue images trapped in MrSID format and to convert them to open ECW
format. Part of Image Rescue will be a set of free and open tools that will
enable mass conversion of images from MrSID format into ECW format.
ERMapper has a very confident and open licensing agreement for their ECW SDK
and very widespread support within the independent software vendor
community. Clearly, ECW is a far more "open" format than MrSID.
I could be wrong about this, but my guess is that if people have very low
cost or free tools for achieving image compression that is superior to MrSID
in all ways, that if they have free tools to easily rescue images now
trapped in MrSID format and if they have an open ECW standard supported with
a wide array of development tools from many different vendors, well,... who
in their right mind would voluntarily continue wearing a sack over their
head and manacles on their arms and legs and a financial drain on their
budget by using MrSID?
Cheers,
Dimitri
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