[HN Gopher] Learning About the GeoTIFF File Format with a Hex Ed...
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       Learning About the GeoTIFF File Format with a Hex Editor (2018)
        
       Author : oldpatricka
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2021-05-05 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | ivanhoe wrote:
       | speaking of this, what hex editor would community recommend for
       | examining (potentially quite large) binaries?
        
         | redrobein wrote:
         | ImHex
        
         | gspr wrote:
         | I haven't gotten my hands dirty with it myself yet, but Poke
         | looks super interesting!
         | 
         | https://www.jemarch.net/poke
         | 
         | https://media.ccc.de/v/ASG2019-127-gnu-poke-an-extensible-ed...
         | 
         | Actually, it sounds like a fun weekend task to redo this
         | GeoTIFF writeup in Poke :-)
        
         | MontagFTB wrote:
         | On the Mac, I cannot recommend Hex Fiend enough:
         | https://hexfiend.com/
        
       | punnerud wrote:
       | Could we build a static "Google Maps" using really big GeoTIFF
       | files and downloading part of them with the section of a file
       | functionality.
       | 
       | Just like the SQLite example:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27025829
        
         | gregsadetsky wrote:
         | I think that you meant to link to
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27016630 instead which was
         | the recently posted SQLite/SQL.js/HTTP range library
         | 
         | And there was a specific sub-thread in the conversation that
         | mentioned using this for maps too!
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27020372
        
           | punnerud wrote:
           | Thank you, a bit too fast there
        
         | kylebarron wrote:
         | You could, you'd just have to be wary of how large the header
         | metadata would be. If you had a single Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF
         | of the world with internal tiles up to zoom 14, the header
         | metadata could be a few MB, which wouldn't be ideal to load in
         | every client.
        
           | kylebarron wrote:
           | See also: https://github.com/pangeo-data/cog-best-
           | practices/issues/9
        
           | simonw wrote:
           | Sad to say it but these days loading a few MB to a client is
           | par for the course. I don't think it's a reason not to try
           | and get this working - the range header trick does sound
           | particularly relevant to this format.
           | 
           | UPDATE: Just read https://kylebarron.dev/blog/cog-
           | mosaic/overview which is excellent and clearly you're already
           | very on top of the range request mechanism!
        
           | gregsadetsky wrote:
           | The posts on this topic on your site are really fascinating!
           | 
           | https://kylebarron.dev/blog/cog-mosaic/overview
           | 
           | https://kylebarron.dev/blog/cog-mosaic/naip
        
             | kylebarron wrote:
             | Thanks! The text is still relevant but those demos are a
             | little old. If you're curious these demos are from last
             | week (using Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs under the hood to
             | serve image data quickly):
             | 
             | - https://studio.unfolded.ai/public/9a2c5cd8-f0f0-43ce-b231
             | -78...
             | 
             | - https://studio.unfolded.ai/public/96c70224-dd89-431f-ae7a
             | -0a...
             | 
             | - https://studio.unfolded.ai/public/af792fd8-1990-4cdc-
             | bf2b-99...
        
       | kylebarron wrote:
       | This is a good hex editor overview, but also the part about
       | Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs is quite good. In the past couple of
       | years COGs have really revolutionized the satellite imagery
       | industry. Even USGS has seen this is the future and publishes the
       | official Landsat data in Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF format [0].
       | 
       | I've been leveraging COGs recently to quickly bring satellite
       | imagery into the browser for analysis [1].
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-
       | systems/nli/landsat/landsa...
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.unfolded.ai/blog/2021-04-28-raster-layer/
        
         | alleycat5000 wrote:
         | We use COGs at work with mapserver (and GDAL's /vsis3/ magic)
         | to serve up imagery internally for qa/qc:
         | 
         | https://github.com/pedros007/mapserver-docker
         | 
         | Literally saves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by
         | avoiding having to stage the imagery locally before serving it
         | out!
        
       | darekkay wrote:
       | I recently did something similar with Foobar 2000's playlist
       | format [1]. It was a fun learning experience :)
       | 
       | [1] https://darekkay.com/blog/foobar2000-playlist-index-format/
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-05 23:00 UTC)