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Creating NITF files

To create a NITF file, use the ‑outputformat switch with either nitf or nitfjp2 as the output type. nitf specifies a raw (uncompressed) output file, whereas nitfjp2 indicates that the NITF file will be encoded as a JPEG 2000 file. The NITF metadata fields can be set by using the ‑nitfmetadata switch and supplying a specially formatted text file. The format of the text file is: <code>:<value>, where <code> is the six-letter field name as defined in the NITF 2.1 spec and <value> is the actual data that the field contains. Only one field is allowed per line, and the <value> portion cannot contain new line characters or span multiple lines. The image segment can contain up to nine Image Comment fields, named ICOM1 through ICOM9.

Example

Following is an example of a NITF metadata text file:

OSTAID:LizardTech

FDT:20041106071325

FTITLE:File title

ONAME:John Smith

OPHONE:555-123-4567

FSCLAS:U

FSCLSY:

FSCODE:codewords

FSCTLH:

FSREL:

FSDCTP:

FSDCDT:

FSDCXM:

FSDG:

FSDGDT:

FSCLTX:

FSCATP:

FSCAUT:

FSCRSN:

FSSRDT:

FSCTLN:

IID1:Image ID

IDATIM:20030401120059

TGTID:

IID2:

ISORCE:

ICOM1:Image segment comment 1

ICOM2:Image segment comment 2

ICOM3:Image segment comment 3

ISCLAS:U

ISCLSY:

ISCODE:image code

ISCTLH:

ISREL:

ISDCTP:

ISDCDT:

ISDCXM:

ISDG:C

ISDGDT:

ISCLTX:image classification text

ISCATP:

ISCAUT:image classification authority

ISCRSN:

ISSRDT:

ISCTLN:

Using this information, the following example shows how you would create a simple uncompressed NITF file on the command line:

mrsidgeoencoder -i foo.tif -o foo.ntf -of nitf ‑nitfmetadata MyNITFMetadata.txt

For a JPEG 2000 encoded NITF file, all of the normal JPEG 2000 encoding options apply. For example:

mrsidgeoencoder -i foo.tif -o foo.ntf -of nitfjp2 ‑nitfmetadata MyNITFMetadata.txt ‑cr 20 ‑tilesize 512 512 ‑porder LRCP

This NITF metadata text file format can be extended to target specific image segments by using the ‑<index> identifier after the field name. For example, to set the image subheader fields for image segment 2, you could enter:

For information on how GeoExpress handles existing NITF metadata, see NITF metadata.