Merge or Join Mosaic datasets in ArcGIS10

[deleted-user-NBi-sopW8_xg]

Hello,

I am attempting to update several large collections of ortho-photography that are managed as Mosaic Datsets (and later used to build cached map services). I have found that after I add the the updated rasters to the existing mosaic datsets the process of updating the overviews is extremely time consuming (it appears that Arc wants to recreate more than half of the overviews, and after 4 days it only processed 10% of them). I have found that I can create a new raster dataset containing only the new rasters in about 16 hours.

So my questions are.

Is there a way to merge or import 1 mosaic dataset into another? I have added the one mosaic to another (add rasters) using the "table" data type with limited success (several of the coarser overviews do not function correctly nor can I seem to rebuild them).

Is there a way I can parse out the generation of overview images across several instances of arcmap processes?

Is there a way to use a mosaic dataset in a map service (to generate a cache) without first generating the overviews?

Thanks for any help anyone here can offer!

James

[JenniferMcCall4]

Hi James,
In response to your first question, have you tried converting the mosaic dataset to a new single raster?  I've used the Mosaic To New Raster tool before to create one tiff file out of my mosaic dataset.  Then I used the new tiff in a new mosaic dataset with other rasters.  That seemed to work well.  The only thing is any color correction for the new tiffs you're creating has to be applied prior to creating the tiff, so if your current mosaic datasets need color correction within them currently then you should do that before.  But you can apply color correction to blend each of the new tiffs into one another in the new mosaic dataset.
Jenn

[deleted-user-NBi-sopW8_xg]

Hi Jenn,

I haven't tried that because I am assuming that won't work. The datasets I am updating are each 3+TB in size (uncompressed 3 band TIFFs). Color correction is not a large issue as the tiles have already been corrected. Given the additional information is their a raster format you think might work?

It also occurred to me that I have built overviews for imagery of similar volume (3+TB), in 3-4 days. Just adding to my current data was going to take 10 times as long? The key differences;

1. The tiles in the current set are larger 12500px vs 5000px 


2. In the current imagery I am adding UTM rasters to a Web Mercator mosaic datset, in the faster set I kept the UTM projection of the imagery for the mosaic.

My thought is to try to rebuild the mosaic from scratch to see if that speeds things up, or (and this would be a lot more work) split the tiles up into smaller tiles.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for your fast response.
James

[JenniferMcCall4]

I'm still looking into your information to see what I can find because those are some massive datasets.
I just had a question about your third question on the map service.  Are you trying to do a map service or image service?  You should be able to generate a cache without overviews for an image service as long as you start at the largest scale and cache up to the smaller scales (or do all scales at once if it works with your imagery).

[deleted-user-NBi-sopW8_xg]

I'm still looking into your information to see what I can find because those are some massive datasets.
I just had a question about your third question on the map service.  Are you trying to do a map service or image service?  You should be able to generate a cache without overviews for an image service as long as you start at the largest scale and cache up to the smaller scales (or do all scales at once if it works with your imagery).

Ultimately it will be a Map Service. We are still at v10 of server which (if my understanding is correct) doesn't support cached imagery services. I am assuming that when caching a mosaic dataset (via a map service) that server uses the overviews to generate the smaller scale layers.

Thanks again.
James