MrSID
Encyclopedia
MrSID is an acronym that stands for multiresolution seamless image database. It is a file format
(filename extension
.sid) developed and patented by LizardTech
for encoding of georeference
d raster graphics
, such as orthophoto
s.
MrSID originated as the result of research efforts at Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL).
(GIS). With this format, large raster
image files such as aerial photographs or satellite imagery
are compressed
and can be quickly viewed without having to decompress the entire file.
The MrSID (.sid) format is supported in all major GIS applications such as CARIS
, ESRI
, BAE Systems CoMPASS, ENVI, ERDAS
, Autodesk
, Bentley Systems
, MapInfo
, Intergraph
and other product lines.
(which releases GDAL
), MrSID was developed "under the aegis
of the U.S. government for storing fingerprints
for the FBI
."
; it can store and retrieve satellite data for consumer games and educational CD-ROMs; and it is well suited for use in vehicle navigation systems. Moreover, MrSID holds promise for being used in image compression
and editing for desktop publishing
and nonlinear digital video software
."
For certain downloadable images (such as maps), American Memory
at the Library of Congress
began using MrSID in 1996; in January 2005 it also began using JPEG 2000
. Depending on image content and color depth, compression of American Memory maps is typically better with MrSID, which on average achieves a compression ratio of approximately 22:1 versus the 20:1 achieved with JPEG 2000.
plug-in for the Microsoft Windows
operating system. (A Macintosh OS version of this viewer, introduced in 2005, was discontinued.) Most commercial GIS software packages can read MrSID files including those from GE Smallworld
, ESRI
, Intergraph
, Bentley Systems
, MapInfo
, Safe Software
, Autodesk
, with ERDAS IMAGINE
being able to both read and write MrSID files. GeoExpress can also generate JPEG 2000
(.jp2) data. When combined with LizardTech's Express Server, .sid and .jp2 data can be served quickly to a variety of GIS applications and other client applications either through direct integrations or via WMS (open source).
There is no open source
implementation of the MrSID format. Some open source GIS systems can read MrSID files, including MapWindow GIS
and those based on GDAL
. The Decode Software Development Kit (SDK) is made available as a free download from developer.lizardtech.com. This enables the capability to implement MrSID reading capability in any application.
Some image editing and management software systems can also read MrSID files, including Xnview
and IrfanView
.
wavelet compression to create an initial image. Then the encoder divides the image into zoom levels, subbands, subblocks and bitplanes. After the initial encoding, the image creator can apply zero or more optimizations. While 2:1 compression ratios may be achieved losslessly, higher compression rates are lossy much like JPEG-compressed
data.
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
(filename extension
Filename extension
A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding of its contents or usage....
.sid) developed and patented by LizardTech
LizardTech
LizardTech is a geospatial software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, notable for transferring the wavelet-based MrSID image encoding and viewing technology from initial development by the U.S...
for encoding of georeference
Georeference
To georeference something means to define its existence in physical space. That is, establishing its location in terms of map projections or coordinate systems. The term is used both when establishing the relation between raster or vector images and coordinates, and when determining the spatial...
d raster graphics
Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
, such as orthophoto
Orthophoto
An orthophoto, orthophotograph or orthoimage is an aerial photograph geometrically corrected such that the scale is uniform: the photo has the same lack of distortion as a map...
s.
MrSID originated as the result of research efforts at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
(LANL).
Geographic information systems
MrSID was originally developed for Geographic Information SystemsGeographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
(GIS). With this format, large raster
Raster
Raster may refer to:* Raster graphics, graphical techniques using arrays of pixel values* Raster graphics editor, a computer program* Raster scan, the pattern of image readout, transmission, storage, and reconstruction in television and computer images...
image files such as aerial photographs or satellite imagery
Satellite imagery
Satellite imagery consists of photographs of Earth or other planets made by means of artificial satellites.- History :The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds...
are compressed
Data compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
and can be quickly viewed without having to decompress the entire file.
The MrSID (.sid) format is supported in all major GIS applications such as CARIS
CARIS
CARIS is a software company that develops and supports geomatics software for land and marine applications.The company was founded in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada in 1979 as Universal Systems Ltd...
, ESRI
ESRI
Esri is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System software and geodatabase management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California....
, BAE Systems CoMPASS, ENVI, ERDAS
ERDAS IMAGINE
ERDAS IMAGINE is a remote sensing application with raster graphics editor capabilities designed by ERDAS for geospatial applications. The latest version is 2010, version 10.1. ERDAS IMAGINE is aimed primarily at geospatial raster data processing and allows the user to prepare, display and enhance...
, Autodesk
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
, Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems, Incorporated is a software company that produces solutions for the design, construction and operation of infrastructure. The company’s software serves the building, plant, civil, and geospatial vertical markets in the areas of architecture, engineering, construction and operations...
, MapInfo
MapInfo
MapInfo Corporation, initially incorporated as Navigational Technologies Incorporated, was a leading Location Intelligence and GIS company, headquartered in North Greenbush, New York. It was acquired on April 19, 2007 by Pitney Bowes, and on January 28, 2009, the name of division of Pitney Bowes it...
, Intergraph
Intergraph
Intergraph Corporation is an American software development and services company. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the world. Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine and Security,...
and other product lines.
Fingerprints
According to the Open Source Geospatial FoundationOpen Source Geospatial Foundation
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation , is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to...
(which releases GDAL
GDAL
GDAL is a library for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats...
), MrSID was developed "under the aegis
Aegis
An aegis is a large collar or cape worn in ancient times to display the protection provided by a high religious authority or the holder of a protective shield signifying the same, such as a bag-like garment that contained a shield. Sometimes the garment and the shield are merged, with a small...
of the U.S. government for storing fingerprints
Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is a national automated fingerprint identification and criminal history system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation . IAFIS provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent searching capability, electronic image...
for the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
."
Other uses
In a 1996 entry for the R&D 100 Awards, LANL identified other uses for the format: "it can be used as an efficient method for storing and retrieving photographic archivesPhoto archive
Photo archive, short for photographs archive or photographic archive, can refer to*any archive of stock photography*any of various photograph collections, including** Bettmann Archive, owned by Corbis...
; it can store and retrieve satellite data for consumer games and educational CD-ROMs; and it is well suited for use in vehicle navigation systems. Moreover, MrSID holds promise for being used in image compression
Image compression
The objective of image compression is to reduce irrelevance and redundancy of the image data in order to be able to store or transmit data in an efficient form.- Lossy and lossless compression :...
and editing for desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
and nonlinear digital video software
Non-linear editing system
In video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
."
For certain downloadable images (such as maps), American Memory
American Memory
American Memory is an Internet-based archive for public domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content. It is published by the Library of Congress...
at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
began using MrSID in 1996; in January 2005 it also began using JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
. Depending on image content and color depth, compression of American Memory maps is typically better with MrSID, which on average achieves a compression ratio of approximately 22:1 versus the 20:1 achieved with JPEG 2000.
Software
LizardTech offers a software package called GeoExpress to read and write MrSID files. They also provide a free web browserWeb browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
plug-in for the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system. (A Macintosh OS version of this viewer, introduced in 2005, was discontinued.) Most commercial GIS software packages can read MrSID files including those from GE Smallworld
Smallworld
Smallworld was a GIS company founded in Cambridge, England, in 1989 by Dick Newell and others. It grew to become the global market leader for GIS in utilities and communications, according to Daratech. In September 2000, it was acquired by GE Energy, a division of General Electric...
, ESRI
ESRI
Esri is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System software and geodatabase management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California....
, Intergraph
Intergraph
Intergraph Corporation is an American software development and services company. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the world. Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine and Security,...
, Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems, Incorporated is a software company that produces solutions for the design, construction and operation of infrastructure. The company’s software serves the building, plant, civil, and geospatial vertical markets in the areas of architecture, engineering, construction and operations...
, MapInfo
MapInfo
MapInfo Corporation, initially incorporated as Navigational Technologies Incorporated, was a leading Location Intelligence and GIS company, headquartered in North Greenbush, New York. It was acquired on April 19, 2007 by Pitney Bowes, and on January 28, 2009, the name of division of Pitney Bowes it...
, Safe Software
Safe Software
Safe Software Inc. provides software and consulting services focused on managing the exchange of both spatial and non-spatial data between GIS applications and/or relational databases with differing file formats and structures....
, Autodesk
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
, with ERDAS IMAGINE
ERDAS IMAGINE
ERDAS IMAGINE is a remote sensing application with raster graphics editor capabilities designed by ERDAS for geospatial applications. The latest version is 2010, version 10.1. ERDAS IMAGINE is aimed primarily at geospatial raster data processing and allows the user to prepare, display and enhance...
being able to both read and write MrSID files. GeoExpress can also generate JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
(.jp2) data. When combined with LizardTech's Express Server, .sid and .jp2 data can be served quickly to a variety of GIS applications and other client applications either through direct integrations or via WMS (open source).
There is no open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
implementation of the MrSID format. Some open source GIS systems can read MrSID files, including MapWindow GIS
MapWindow GIS
MapWindow GIS is an open source GIS application and set of programmable mapping components. It has been adopted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as the primary GIS platform for its BASINS watershed analysis and modeling software.-Technical details:MapWindow GIS is distributed...
and those based on GDAL
GDAL
GDAL is a library for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats...
. The Decode Software Development Kit (SDK) is made available as a free download from developer.lizardtech.com. This enables the capability to implement MrSID reading capability in any application.
Some image editing and management software systems can also read MrSID files, including Xnview
XnView
XnView is a cross-platform image viewer used for viewing, converting, organising and editing graphical & video files. It is free of charge for private, educational and non-profit organisations...
and IrfanView
IrfanView
IrfanView is a freeware/shareware image viewer for Microsoft Windows that can view, edit, and convert image files and play video/audio files. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats, and has some image creation and painting...
.
Encoding
MrSID technology uses losslessLossless data compression
Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. The term lossless is in contrast to lossy data compression, which only allows an approximation of the original data to be reconstructed, in exchange...
wavelet compression to create an initial image. Then the encoder divides the image into zoom levels, subbands, subblocks and bitplanes. After the initial encoding, the image creator can apply zero or more optimizations. While 2:1 compression ratios may be achieved losslessly, higher compression rates are lossy much like JPEG-compressed
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
data.
Decoding
MrSID uses selective decoding meaning that the decoder does not have to decode the entire file to view a specific zoom level, image quality or scene for example.External links
- MrSID Technology Primer (PDF) from LizardTech's website