Latest Contributions by PeterBecker

Check the properties of the raster that comes up black in comparion with the other rasters. There is a recent seperate review on a possible issue between some files that are MSBFirst vs LSBFirst. Some of the format readers can get this wrong. As timmerspk  mentions, try converting that one file if necessary. ... View more

You can use an Image Service directly in a geoprocessing tool by first using 'Make Image Server Layer'.This enables you to define various properties such as the mosaic method. The Spatial Analyst tools will use the Raster environment variables that include defintipon of the Cell size. I would recommend you specifically define the cell size such else the system will use the Base Pixel Size which depending on the defined extent may be a very large request. ... View more

Looks like something incorrect in the definition of the top most service overviews. Suggest you select and delete the top (largest LoPS) overviews, then redefine the service overviews and regenerate. May have been caused by an error in the boundary. Re-generate the boundary prior to redefining the service overviews. ... View more

Using DispOrder overrides the mosaic method. Mosaic Method is only applied to records where the dispOrder is 0. To force images in a speciifc order set the disp order to a lower (negative value). IE set -1 for the 2009 and -2 for the 2005 images. The MosaicMethod should also work. For example if you have a field called year, set the be Mosic Method to ByAttribute, set the Field to be Year and the Base value to be say 3000. Images should be ordered closest to year 3000 so long as they are in scale. Double check that the MaxPS values enable the 2009 imagery to be displayed at the smaller scales. ... View more

There is no need to cut the image and craete a new pne. Instead modify the Image Service definition. You can individually edit the footprint of the different rasters to exlude areas that are not to be seen. Alternativly to clip something gloablly edit the Boundary layer and then Recompute Footprint by Clipping to Boundary. Any pixels outside the footprints will be clipped without the need to creating any new dataset. Scuh clipped images work well in ArcGIS applicaitons since transparancy is correctly handled. IE the image can be transitted using JPEG compression, but a mask is also transmitted to cleanly handle the transparent areas. Note that in ArcGIS 10 the desktop can also do this. Any raster can be clipped using a graphic and the result stored as a LYR file that can be used in applications such as ArcGIS Explorer. ... View more

For large service look to using c:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Image Server\Developer Kit\Automation\DeriveImages (avaialble after installing the DevKit). This enables the server to create the Service Overviews and is more performing. Also double check the size of the RPDefs. When service overviews are created the system generates DIDefs that contains all the metadata from the dependant rasters. If the rasters contains a lot of metadta and a large number of rasters are required for a single MD tile, then these DIDefs may get too large and cause such an error. If so consider removing some of the metadata from the RPDefs (using Edit Raster Properties to replace XML nodes) ... View more

Advantages: Make use of power of geoDatabase in being highly scalable (to many millions of records) Can use both file or Enterprise Mosaic Dataset Integrates with other ArcGIS tools for editing and management. Can use GPTools fot a lot of things. Can be used direclty by ArcGIS applicaitons (does not need server) Can directly program using ArcObjects No Compile required prior to  publishing Disadvantage: Adding data can sometime be slighly slower, but this is offset by fact that no compile is required to use. XML (for those that like working wthi XMK) is hidden - but RPDefs can still be used. Converting existind Mosaic Datasets is very easy. ISDef and RPdef are a Raster Type. To covnert an ISDef just create a new Mosaic Dataset and add the existing ISDef. All properties will be transfered. ... View more

It would appear that one of the images (which is being used to determine some stats) is somehow incorrect. In such cases there is no real need to run build. For the Pixel sizes check that the Min,MaxPS values in the table make sense. Also check that the Service output properties are elevation. If there are concerns about the boundary being incorrect the re-build the boundary. You should be able to see the imagery. With elevation data, the issue often is that the stats make little sense. Best is to set the Min,max values for the renderer in ArcMap when you display the imagery vs using something like StdDev which has little value for elevation. The other issue may be that overview have not yet been created. Not for elevation data if it often advantageous to use other data for the overviews (eg NED data from USGS or SRTM data) both can be downloaded. ... View more

Yes you can. Its a very valid workflow for organizations that have Intergraph based workflows. Terrashare ingests and stores the meta information from the DMC cameras and the Intergraph IS* photogrammetry products and handles management of the distribution of different files. It can also be used to manage the processing of imagery into orthos etc and has some dissemination capabilities for the generated orthos. The images them selves are stored as files on disk. Terrashare enables the export of ISAT project files that contain the interior and exterior orientation parameters, camera calibration etc, either directly from the IMU or the result of Aerial Triangulation. These ISAT project files can be used as input to Image Services Definitions (or Mosaic Datasets at V10). Importing these enables the Image server technology to On-the-fly orthorectify and mosaic the imagery. The big advantage being in the time between image acquisition and use is reduced and no additional storage is required.  ArcGIS can also handle the 12bit JPEG compressed imagery that is often used for compression of this higher bit depth imagery. My recommendation (if space is an issue) is to JPEG compress the Pan Image, while leaving the MD image (which is much smaller) uncompressed. The use of such image servcies can be of significant benefit for time critical applications as well as QC. IE you can create such a service very quickly after flying and then update it as other processes such as AT are performed. The fact that the technology performs such process as PanSharpening on the fly can considerably reduce disk storage. The on-the-fly processing enables the creation of multiple products such as False Color IR and NDVI. You may already have workflows to generate orthos that are certified by some process and wish to continue to generate these. These resulting orthos can naturally also be served quickly to a very large range of users both using WMS as well as Image Service that provide capabilities such as compression for transmission, dynamic mosaicking to control the overlap of the imagery and detailed metadata. What you need is ArcGIS Server and the Image extension. Note that in V10 the capabilities of reading in ISAT files and creating Mosaic Datasets that perform on-the-fly processing are part of ArcGIS Desktop. You would still require ArcGIS Server and the Image Extension for the serving of the imagery. ... View more

I'm not sure why the one area is coming up black. Please check the raster by adding it directly in ArcMap. Is it possible that it needs to be scaled? Yes you can get the system to exclude the NoData areas by redefining the footprints to exclude these areas. Use the recompute footprint by Radiometery function. You will need to set the number of vertices to something like 50 for these shapes. For elevation data is so  sometime better to use a service process to classify the imagery into two colors, compute the footprint and then remove the classification process. This will not remove holes though. In some cases is it better to edit the edges or you may have a shape with the geometry and you can use recompute footprint by related geometry. V10 has much better support for NoData areas. For the data that you have that is ASCII DEM I would recommend you convert this to TIF wtih LZW compression. It will be much smaller and faster. ... View more

The RRD files are used if you add the data using the 'ArcGIS Raster Datasets' raster type.  Pyramids are only of use for larger images (>7000 cols). Only the pyramid level were the Number of Cols is >1500 are added. IE if  you added data that has 10,000 cols and a RRD file, then the the first level (5000 cols) and second level (2500 cols) will be added but not the 3rd level (1250). This is so that the system does not try and use the overviews from lots of images at smaller scales. RRD files are not quite so optimum as a format and are not compressed so are relatively large (they are the same format a .IMG). If you want to optimize these and using TIF as a source then I would currently suggest using internal pyramids. These can be created using GDAL gdalaaddo command from FWTools. This can be directly used by ArcGIS Desktop as well. Note that in V10 OVR files (which are TIF format and can be compressed) are used as the default method for generating pyramids of raster datasets if none exist. IE having internal pyramids will be used by 9.3 and V10. Pyramids have most value when the images are large. ... View more

It would appear that the MinPS and MaxPS values have not been correctly computed. Open the service table and review the MinPS and MaxPS values. For the higher resolution imagery the MinPS should be 0 and the MaxPS should be the same as the MinPS of overlapping imagery (eg Service overviews). Also check the Service Properties, Output Properties Minimum Pixel Size and Maximum Pixel Size. These should generally be 0 and a very large value. Note that it is not necessary to do a Build frequently, even if changes are made to the service. Build is only required when some of the defined set of parameters change and you wish the system to compute new values.. On large service only perform build on the aspects that need to be updated. Many of the values that are computed by build can also be set manually. ... View more

The issue is that in one of the processes stats for the service were created and are associated with the service. When ArcMap opens a raster that contains stats it by default applied a 2StdDev stretch. This can be turned off in the ArcMap 'Tools,Option,Raster, Display rasters with contrast stretching' option. This though is only for one machine. There does not exist a specific tool to remove the stats from a service. The simplest method is to open the xxx.ISDef/ImageService.ISDef  file with a text editor. Find and delete the node called <Bands> IE the section       <Bands>         <ActualValues>true</ActualValues>         <Alias>Histogram Generation for ImageService</Alias> ......      </Bands> You will need to recompile the service. Do not run the Build with the "Compute output properties" else the stats will be regenerated. ... View more

Generally it is best not to serve an MXD that contains imagery and vectors. This will result in a map being returned a map that can not be compressed well. It is better to return separate layers for vectors and imagery. The vectors as PNG and the imagery as JPEG. If you want to use imagery in a flex application I would recommend that you directly connect the flex app to Image Services (See Image Service in the Flex help). These provide more functionality (eg changeable compression) then serving through map services and are more efficient.  Also if you want a layer that contains the three scales of imagery, I would recommend you do this as an Image Service. This way the merging of the imagery is done on the server which is more efficient. If you already have three image services you can create a single service that concatenates these (use ISDefs). It is a bit more efficient to use an Image Service in which you directly import all the imagery at different resolutions. This way you can also get Metadata of the individual images. ... View more

Direct lidar sources (such as LAS) can not currently be directly handled. (yet) Rasterized lidar elevation data can be served. The methodology is to create a Elevation based Images Service Definition and then serve this. A number of different formats are supported as part of the Elevation raster types and they system will mosaic the elevation together that can be in different format and projections. A presentation on this was given at FedUC in Feb 2010 (see http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/feduc10/papers/tech/feduc2010_image_services_for_elevation.pdf) (It appears that this file is currently broken. I sill check and get it repaired.) The big advantage to serving elevation as image services is that you can create an elevation service that dynamically mosaics a lot of different sources together. Eg GTOPO + SRTM + NED + rasterized lidar Concerning the format of the data. Although GRID can be used as a source, I would recommend were possible converting to 32bit float TIF with LZW compression.. There can be issues in serving GRID files higher capacity servers. TIF works well. ASCII DEMs would work, but I don't recommend as they are very large and slow to read. The main issue in 9.3 with such elevation data is handling nodata areas. These are best handled by redefining the footprint of the rasters to exclude NoData area. Support for data with NoData is improved significantly at V10. ... View more