McIDAS AREA File

This is an image file format used by the McIDAS analysis package.  WXP supports a subset of the AREA file types including those with GVAR, GOES, MSAT, PS and MOLL navigation types.  WXP can handle both the 8 and 16 bit image file format. Also, WXP can read in the run length compressed files provided from SSEC as part of the Unidata McIDAS data channel.

FORMAT

The file is split up into 3 components:

  1. Image Directory (256 bytes) which contains the image type, size, resolution and date information.
  2. Navigation (512+ bytes) which contains information to navigate the images which allows a program to convert the location of each pixel in the image to a latitude and longitude for precise location of the image.
  3. Pixel data (the rest of the file).  This may be packed or unpacked and its size is defined by the image directory. Each pixel/byte is saved from left to right on the scan line. Each scan line is stored consecutively from top to bottom.

SEE ALSO

For further information about WXP, email technical-support@weather.unisys.com
Last updated by Dan Vietor on August 7, 1998