20011022: converting GINI format images to McIDAS AREA

>From: Kevin Thomas <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Oklahoma
>Keywords: 200110222135.f9MLZn102781 McIDAS-X ADDE GINI AREA

Kevin,

>I'm Kevin Thomas at CAPS (Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms) in
>Norman, Oklahoma.  I am a meteorologist, but I know virtually nothing about
>McIdas.

OK, no problem.

>I've inherited a problem from Jason Levit, who has talked to your end in the
>past.
>
>We are currently running McIdas 7.7.  I've requested that our support people
>upgrade to 7.8, however, I have no control when that will happen.

Fair enough.

>Our goal is to take GINI satellite data from a NOAAport feed, and convert it
>to a format that is compatible with existing software.  I would guess that we
>are using a default standard McIdas format (files are ftp'd from the OU School
>of Meteorology).

I would guess that your existing software understands how to read McIDAS
AREA files.

>Running a "strings -" on the file shows a line with
>"RT GVAR", if that is of help.   I'd also be interested in finding out
>how to convert the same data to "gif", or some format displayable from the
>web, however, that is less important.

Conversion to GIF (tm) or JPEG, BMP, PS, CPS, or PPM is easily done using
the FRMSAVE command of McIDAS.  FRMSAVE saves the contents of a McIDAS
frame to any one of the above forms.  The process of creating the desired
output, therefore, would be composed of two steps:

o load the image/portion of the image of interest into a frame
o save the contents of the frame in the desired format

Here is a quick example.  Suppose that you have setup your GINI ADDE dataset
as you note below, and a member is GINICAPS/GOES08VIS.  Let's load the
image into a frame and then save it using FRMSAVE:

SF 1
IMGDISP GINICAPS/GOES08VIS STA=KINX MAG=-3 REFRESH='EG;MAP H'
FRMSAVE 1 ginivis.gif
FRMSAVE 1 ginivis.jpg FORM=JPG
FRMSAVE 1 ginivis.ps  FORM=PS
etc.

>I've already found out about teaching McIdas to know about the data sets.

Excellent.

>Output from "imglist.k" seems reasonable:
>
>mcidas@cube$ imglist.k GINICAPS/GOES08VIS FORM=EXP
>
>Image file directory listing for:GINICAPS/GOES08VIS
> Pos Satellite/         Date       Time      Center      Res (km)   Image_Size
>     sensor                                 Lat  Lon    Lat   Lon
> --- -------------  ------------  --------  ---- ----  ----- ----- -----------
> -
>   1  G-8 IMG       22 OCT 01295  20:15:00    41   88
>    Band: 1   0.65 um Visible - Cloud Cover              1.0   1.0  5120 x 512
> 0
>     proj:    0 created: 2001295 205006  memo: GINI:: Sat 11  SecID  1  ChID  
> 1
>     type:VISR     cal type:BRIT
>     offsets:  data=     768 navigation=  256 calibration=    0 auxillary=    
> 0
>     doc length:   0   cal length:   0   lev length:   0 PREFIX=   0
>     valcod:          0 zcor:  0 avg-smp: N
>     start yyddd: 2001295  start time:201500  start scan:    0
>     lcor:    1  ecor:     1  bytes per pixel: 1  ss: 70
>     Image Center Point Res (derived)  Lat:   0.98 (km)  Lon:   0.98 (km)
>
>imglist.k: done

Looks OK.

>I keep seeing examples of an "imgcopy.k", however, it just gives errors.
>
>mcidas@cube$ imgcopy.k GINICAPS/GOES08VIS MYDATA/IMAGES.1234 SIZE=ALL
>
>Beginning Image Data transfer, bytes= 26215168
>imgcopy.k: Image token server unable to resolve this dataset: MYDATA/IMAGES
>imgcopy.k: done

So, the ADDE dataset MYDATA has not been defined in your account yet.
To define the various components of MYDATA, do the following:

batch.k MYDATA.BAT

Among other things, this runs:

DSSERVE ADD MYDATA/IMAGES   AREA    1 9999 "All images in AREA format

Which defines MYDATA/IMAGES to be the set of AREA files AREA0001 - AREA9999,
inclusive.

>If I try to run it without the ".1234", it gives me:
>
>mcidas@cube$ imgcopy.k GINICAPS/GOES08VIS MYDATA/IMAGES SIZE=ALL
>imgcopy.k: done

The output from the first command is telling us all that we need.

>The problem is that it doesn't seem to generate files anywhere.  Using the
>SGI "par" command confirms this.
>
>Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Try defining the MYDATA/IMAGES dataset as described above and rerunning
your IMGCOPY command.

Tom Yoksas