NITF (NITF)

Long name	National Imagery Transmission Format
Short name	NITF
File extension(s)	.ntf, filename:number

This NITF implementation is very similar to GDB's previous implementation that was certified by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC). The underlying NITFS features supported for registration have been maintained, but the Focus-level ELT-type behavior for NITF files has been modified to conform to regular GDB file support. The features of the certified NITF can be viewed in the JITC compliancy register. NITF Version 1.1 is also supported.

Export options

The following export options can be entered in the Focus Translate (Export) window.

NITF version options

You can choose from among several NITF versions when you create a new NITF file. The version of the NITF standard that is used is controlled by one of four values:

NITF2.00: a main version for NITF is NITF2.0.
NITF2.10: another main NITF is NITF 2.1. The default version is NITF 2.10.
NSIF1.00: the NSIF (NATO Secondary Imagery Format).
OSDE1.00: the OSDE (Open Skies Digital Data Exchange) profile of ISO BIIF (Basic Image Interchange Format).

Compression

Two compression types can be applied to imagery in the NITF file:

Uncompressed: no compression.
Vector Quantized: compressed with VQ (vector quantized) compression. The number of iterations to find the best codebook can be controlled using the PSNR (Power Signal to Noise Ratio) option. The default value for PSNR is 35. Typical values are between 30 and 40.

Tiling

The following types of tiling are available:

Default tiling: the NITF image is tiled and the tile size is selected by GDB.
Tiled<xx>: user-defined tile size. <xx> is the tile size in pixels, for example, “Tiled64”. For user-defined tile sizes, only square tiles can be used. When the compression type is VQ, the tile size must be a multiple of 8. When the NITF version is 2.0, the tiles must be square and are limited to powers of two between 32 and 1024 inclusive.
Not tiled: the image is non-tiled.

Site-specific default metadata

When an NITF file is created, some of the metadata has default values specific to each particular site. An example is the ONAME (Originator’s Name) field which contains a name for the operator. Each field that has a default is specified in the nitf.defaults file. This file should be placed in the etc subdirectory of the CATALYST Professional install directory.

Each line in the nitf.defaults file has the name of the field, colon, space, and the value. An example file is

ONAME: XYZ Company
OPHONE: 1 (800) 555-0022
OSTAID: TorontoON
FSCLAS: U

The following fields are valid entries in the nitf.defaults file:

ONAME, OPHONE, OSTAID, OID,
FSCLAS, FSCLSY, FSCODE, FSCTLH,
FSREL, FSDCTP, FSDCDT, FSDCXM,
FSDG, FSDGDT, FSCLTX, FSCATP,
FSCAUT, FSCRSN, FSSRDT, FSCTLN,
FSDWNG, FSDEVT

Values for the above-listed fields are not validated with the exception of FSCLAS, which can only have a value of T, S, C, R or U.

Further information on editing metadata values is given in the following section.

Editing metadata

The metadata values shown in Focus in the File Properties window can be edited. However, the user must ensure that the format of the new values conforms to the standard. For example, in NITF 2.0 the IDATIM (Image Date and Time) field has the format of DDHHMMSSZMONYY, whereas in NITF 2.1 it has the format of CCYYMMDDhhmmss.

Some values are intrinsic to the file; therefore, the edited values will not be saved. For more details, please see the appropriate NITF standards document at http://www.gwg.nga.mil/ntb/baseline/documents.html.