Output Format

Data organization

The data are organized in a gridded data structure, i.e. data cubes. The tiles manifest as directories in the file system, and the images are stored within.

Data Cube definition

The spatial data cube definition is appended to each data cube, i.e. to each directory containing tiled datasets, see Data Cube definition.

Naming convention

The basename for the output files can be defined in the parameter file. The basename will be appended by module ID, product ID and the file extension.

File format

The images are provided with signed 16bit datatype and band sequential (BSQ) interleaving in one of the following formats:

GeoTiff

This is the recommended output option. Images are compressed GeoTiff images using LZW compression with horizontal differencing. The images are generated with internal blocks for partial image access. These blocks are strips that are as wide as the TILE_SIZE and as high as the BLOCK_SIZE.
ENVI Standard format

This produces flat binary images without any compression. This option might seem tempting as there is no overhead in cracking the compression when reading these data. However, the transfer of the larger data volume from disc to CPU often takes longer than cracking the compression. Therefore, we recommend to use the GeoTiff option.

Metadata

Metadata are written to all output products. For ENVI format, the metadata are written to the ENVI header (.hdr extension). For GeoTiff format, the metadata are written into the GeoTiff file. If the metadata is larger than allowed by the GeoTiff driver, the excess metadata will be written to an “auxiliary metadata” file with .aux.xml extension. FORCE-specific metadata will be written to the FORCE domain, and thus are probably not visible unless the FORCE domain (or all domains) are specifically printed:

gdalinfo -mdd all 20160823_LEVEL2_SEN2A_BOA.tif

Product type

Regression
Classification