Charts II: NGA - 2700 Charts

[sinbad7]

Paul..

I think I have a serious problem in the PROPSYS.DLL file. I quite frequently get the attached error message when I try to load a file from a different directory.

I can aparently download a new PROPSYS.DLL file to install but it is quite tricky and I might destroy everything if I am not careful playing with the registry.

Any ideas?

Tore

[Tia Bu]

Guys:


I know nohal et al are working on a web-based calibration solution. I have NO desire to interrupt or disrupt that effort. But do you guys expect it will be easier/quicker than this, which a few of us have tried and seems to work?:


1. Download the newest version of GE2KAP from Paul's website.


2. 2. Convert the jpg to a png:

(Using nconvert-)

nconvert -out png -resize 30% 30% -colors 64 24402.jpg

Note: we are now using the "colors" parameter

If you need to rotate the chart then add the rotate parameter:

nconvert -out png -resize 30% 30% -colors 64 -rotate 270 25001.jpg

(or using Microsoft Office Picture Manager- a GUI program that seems to handle the big files with ease)

Reduce size to 30% of original size and convert to a .png file. Rotate the chart if necessary. Changing the color parameter doesn’t seem to be necessary to produce a quality chart, at least with this method.

3. Then do the calibration wth MapCal. Don't forget the two calibration points in upper right and lower left and the border around the actual chart.

4. Run GE2KAP, put the png in overlay field and check the "Create kap from overlay...."

5. To test the chart in OpenCPN: Load it into an active chart directory, start OpenCPN and Force a full database rebuild.

This whole process can be all GUI interface. It only takes me (a non-programmer) about ten minutes to calibrate and create a usable .kap chart from the .jpg’s currently in the repository. I know nohal and others are working on a web-based program to do this, but will it be faster or easier than the above? If so, does it make sense to wait for it?


It looks like the process above might be simple enough and fast enough for a lot of folks to start working on the calibrations now. We would need to know where to upload the finished charts, and we would need someone to quality check the charts as Cagney suggested far above (by opening them in OpenCPN and using the cursor to check the lat/lon of a few lat/lon line intersections on the chart). The checker(s) could perhaps flag any charts that need to be recalibrated. The weight of opinion in the discussion above seems to indicate that we should leave any Notice to Mariner updates until a later stage?

I’m a recent volunteer to the effort (was out sailing in July), and BY NO MEANS want to hijack or disrupt the work process with this suggestion. And I certainly could be saying something stupid or missing the obvious. Please don’t hesitate to correct if I’m off-base here.

[nohal]

Tia Bu...
This process is generally OK and works well for producing a couple of charts for home use, but is a little more problematic for the whole project.
To be able to produce charts compatible also with other navigational systems, we need to collect more chart metadata for the creation of .BSB files and improved "formal" quality of the KAP headers. Also it's non-trivial to organize the effort of this size without having some backend in place.

To be more positive. The system is almost ready. Really. We will also accept the headers of charts created using this process (+ the missing metadata we need) shortly after we are done with the basic system.

BUT if you do any cropping or rotation to the chart, we will need to know the coordinates and/or angle you used, otherwise such a header will be totally unusable.
Also an advice or request: please use a scale-down factor for which I will not have to use numbers like 3.3333333333333333334 to multiply the coordinates to get back to the original size - 50%, 25% or 20% are much nicer...

Thanks

Pavel

[micheck]

Before you start cutting and shrinking and ..., do you have the original compiled files backed up? Some of us have space on servers on the Internet to store a copy but do not have the bandwidth to allow use as a mirror site.

Charles

[Tia Bu]

Nohal: It sounds like it's worth waiting a while longer for your system. It seems difficult to guess in advance what rotation, cropping, and size reduction will work well with that system.

Thanks for your hard work. Let us know how we can help.

[HappySeagull]

..oh Gee.I was hoping for an online header-form to fill out ...Failing that,an offline header-form to send back...that way,all the kaps could be consistently crafted by those Vulcans-Nohal,Netsurfer,et al.
that's the way to go.

[cagney]

Originally Posted by micheck

Before you start cutting and shrinking and ..., do you have the original compiled files backed up? Some of us have space on servers on the Internet to store a copy but do not have the bandwidth to allow use as a mirror site.

Charles

Thank you Charles, for your offer, and yes, it would be nice if you made a backup copy.
The files ought to be backed up by now, but I don't know the actual state of that. The charts are such a treasure that multiple backups is a very good idea.

Thomas

[dacust]

Originally Posted by cagney

Thank you Charles, for your offer, and yes, it would be nice if you made a backup copy.
The files ought to be backed up by now, but I don't know the actual state of that. The charts are such a treasure that multiple backups is a very good idea.

Thomas

Last weekend, I downloaded all of them to an external drive at my house. After this weekend, they'll be copied to a RAID set. If they are ever needed, I could put them on my website.

There was one chart that failed on download. I'll post that when I get home tonight.

-dan

[cagney]

Originally Posted by dacust

Last weekend, I downloaded all of them to an external drive at my house. After this weekend, they'll be copied to a RAID set. If they are ever needed, I could put them on my website.

There was one chart that failed on download. I'll post that when I get home tonight.

-dan

Dan,
Great!
Thank you very much!
Thomas

[micheck]

Thomas - drop me a PM on how to best do this transfer - computers are not my major thing!

Charles

[Tia Bu]

Originally Posted by nohal

BUT if you do any cropping or rotation to the chart, we will need to know the coordinates and/or angle you used, otherwise such a header will be totally unusable.
Also an advice or request: please use a scale-down factor for which I will not have to use numbers like 3.3333333333333333334 to multiply the coordinates to get back to the original size - 50%, 25% or 20% are much nicer...

Thanks

Pavel

Pavel:

I putzed around with a few conversions/calibrations yesterday and today just to experiment. I found that conversions with the PNG's reduced to 25% of the original .jpg size worked ok, using the Mapcal and GE2KAP process. But the resulting chart, when viewed in OpenCPN, had substantial degradation of the text at closer zoom levels.

When I tried converting at a 50% reduction, the file sizes were so big they started crashing first my graphics program (I switched to XNView and got past that) and later Mapcal. I also tried at reduction to 40%. That worked with Mapcal, but it seems to mess up the color conversion in GE2KAP. Reduction to 30% makes very nice charts (at least on my machine), but that seems to mess up the files for use in your process.

I don't know if any of this relevant to what you're doing, but thought I'd pass it on for what it's worth. My machine is a dual core processor running Windows 7, with 2gb RAM and 2gb virtual memory.

Marshall

[HappySeagull]

Skewed Charts...Something to watch closely for before calibrating..
I find
29107 is skewed 0.265 anti-clock...

Yes,it might be my conversion,but even so..these subtleties deserve comment ....0.265 degrees makes an untidy calibration in a big chart...

[HappySeagull]

Originally Posted by Tia Bu

Pavel:

I putzed around with a few conversions/calibrations yesterday and today just to experiment. I found that conversions with the PNG's reduced to 25% of the original .jpg size worked ok, using the Mapcal and GE2KAP process. But the resulting chart, when viewed in OpenCPN, had substantial degradation of the text at closer zoom levels.

When I tried converting at a 50% reduction, the file sizes were so big they started crashing first my graphics program (I switched to XNView and got past that) and later Mapcal. I also tried at reduction to 40%. That worked with Mapcal, but it seems to mess up the color conversion in GE2KAP. Reduction to 30% makes very nice charts (at least on my machine), but that seems to mess up the files for use in your process.
...

Marshall

Marshall,have you tried 50% sized,256 colours, bmps in Mapcal?I find they work in the largest charts.

[cagney]

Around July 18th NGA uploaded about 50 charts. This was in the middle of our download. I have checked about 10 of these, and just one was downloaded and had a directory on the server.
There is also one dated Aug 2, that looks like an updated file.
Gunther - do you want to test your updating ideas?

To see the new charts go to Index of /NGAViewer and then use "Find" for "Jul" and "Aug".

Thomas

[Tia Bu]

Originally Posted by HappySeagull

Marshall,have you tried 50% sized,256 colours, bmps in Mapcal?I find they work in the largest charts.

This works better, but the largest charts still crash and burn on my machine. I don't know if this is relevant to the web-based calibration project. Would we actually be manipulating image files and doing calibrations on our computers, or would we just be entering data for the images to be processed on a server somewhere else?