How long should projecting an orthophoto take?

[MarkHotz]

I created a mosaic from 411 TIFF orthophotos.   The TIFFs total 106 GB in size and each are in UTM. However, the final image needs to be projected for our web map (Portal) as it's typically not wise to allow it to reproject on-the-fly over a LAN when you want users to have a relatively fast and responsive mapping experience; hence, it should be in the same projection used by Portal.

So I'm in process of projecting the Mosaic using the raster projection tool.  I opted to run this through Modelbuilder so I can at least see if the process is indeed processing.  However, actual progress, I find, can only be done by monitoring the size of the folder where the final image is going (using Windows Explorer).

The problem I'm going to have is time.  This folder into which the projected Mosaic will be deposited is growing at about 18 mb/minute, and the resulting file won't be 106 GB...it will more than likely end up being around 150 GB in size.  By my calculations (and correct me if I'm wrong), the resulting file is growing at approximately 1 GB/hour; hence, at this rate the projected image will be completed in approximately 150 hours....This means at this rate the final image should be completed in about 6 days.  Cripes.

Does this should right to you?  Should a simple projection of an image take almost a week to process in ArcMap?  Is there perhaps a faster way to do this?

Thanks

[MarkHotz]

Paul:

Thanks very much for this too...I had no idea that processing through Python would make that much of a difference, so obviously you and Jayanta are ahead of the curve here.  

I will most definitely explore Python for processing spatial data, and will also looking into ELA as that might be an option for us as well.  I have ArcGIS Pro but have not really used it that much...but this too might be worth exploring.  I just need to make sure that the tool I need to use is actually optimized to run in a 64-bit environment.  If so then this might be the least expensive approach.

Thanks again.  

[PaulDavidson1]

There is also the 64bit background processing library.

I haven't used it yet but I probably should.

Lot of overhead with Model Builder.

You're inside ArcMap, then inside a Model, then calling out to Python, etc...

In your case, maybe not a big difference since like you said, you're really just calling one tool.

But if that we're available in 64bit, that might make a difference.

Remember also that from Model Builder, you can export the Model to Python.

Not the best code you'll ever see and doesn't always run first shot but it will give you a basic structure and all the function calls.  If you haven't done much or any Python, probably a decent way to get into it.

The Esri Python course is also well worth it the $1200 or so.

I'm like you, I've installed and played with Pro but that's about it.

But the Utility Network requires ArcPro so we're going to have to introduce it.