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20031213: mcidas image ingest?



>From: Neil Smith <address@hidden>
>Organization: Texas A&M
>Keywords: 200312131919.hBDJJ8p2018320 ldm-mcidas McIDAS-XCD

Hi Neil,

>ldm-6.0.14
>mcidas-X,XCD 2002
>
>Now I'm confused.
>mcidas-xcd config says ldm will ingest/decode with pqact entries like

>HRS            ^.*     PIPE            xcd_run HRS

Right.  McIDAS-XCD is the set of decoders for conventional data such
as POINT data (surface, upper air, synoptic, etc. observations) from
NOAAPORT and model output from NOAAPORT.

>but the ldm example MCIDAS entries use pnga2area .. eg. to write to the 
>gempak directory stucture

Yes.  The satellite imagery in the UNIWISC IDD feed (aka MCIDAS) is
not part of NOAAPORT.  It is a stream that Unidata funds SSEC to create
for the Unidata community.  The imagery is sent out in the IDD after
being PNG compressed.  ldm-mcidas decoders like pnga2area uncompress
the imagery and can write it into files named in the old McIDAS format
(AREAnnnn) or in the more useful format used by GEMPAK and McIDAS.

>What is the method of getting AREA files?

You must 'request' the UNIWISC data from your upstream IDD site and
also have pqact.conf actions to decode it into McIDAS AREA files
either named in the old AREAnnnn format or using more descriptive
names and hierarchial structure (like used by GEMPAK and/or McIDAS).

>I suppose I'd like to get 
>AREA files like we used to in older ldm/mcidas config (eg. to /data/mcidas)
>but I also think I'd like
>the decoding to the std. gempak directory structure as the pnga2area 
>example entries, too.

This is easily done and is illustrated in the example pqact.conf entries 
sent out with the ldm-mcidas distribution.  You can find a file of
these examples in the etc subdirectory of the ldm-mcidas distribution.
The same information is also available online at:

ldm-mcidas HomePage
http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/mcidas/mcidd/index.html

  Using LDM-McIDAS Decoders
  http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/mcidas/mcidd/ldm-mcidas-use.html

    ldm-mcidas-pqact.conf
    
http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/mcidas/mcidd/ldm-mcidas-pqact.conf
    
>Any help/explanation welcome.

Please let me know if the entries in ldm-mcidas-pqact.conf are not immediately
clear as to their purpose

By the way, McIDAS can use the data stored in the GEMPAK directory
hierarchy as easily as it can use data named in the old AREAnnnn
convention.  The only thing that does not (yet) work in the GEMPAK
formalism is the McIDAS PostProcess BATCH files that a number of sites
use to generate GOES-East/GOES-West composites (e.g., VIS, IR, WV and
composites of imagery with topography).  If you want to (keep) run(ing)
the compositing actions, you will still have to use the McIDAS routing
table concepts and save files in the old AREAnnnn names.  This does
not mean that you can't also decode into the hierarchy used by GEMPAK;
you can.

>Thanks, -Neil

No worries.

Tom