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Format

Enhanced Compression Wavelet

Summary

Name
Enhanced Compression Wavelet
Identifiers
PUID: fmt/371
Format type
Image (Raster)
Description
ECW (Enhanced Compression Wavelet) is a proprietary wavelet compression image format optimized for geospatial imagery, which can quickly compress and decompress huge images, especially aerial and satellite imagery. It was developed by Earth Resource Mapping, and is now owned by ERDAS, which is owned by Leica Geosystems. The requirement of using the ECWP format for any application is that it requires the user to download and install enabling software in the form of a plug-in or in the case of the Java applet, a Java runtime environment (JRE).
File extensions
ecw
Source
Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives
Developed by
Earth Resource Mapping, Inc. / Earth Resource Mapping, Inc.

Internal signatures

Enhanced Compression Wavelet

Note
Regularly recurring header sequence

Byte sequences

Min Frag Length
Absolute from BOF
Offset
0
Max offset
None
Byte Sequence
65020102{1}0400(00|01|02|06){2}00(00|02|03|04|06){2}00030001
Endianness
None

Changelog

  • Updated in V105

    Release date
    29 June 2022

    Enhanced Compression Wavelet: Widened signature to account for variations in files found by enquirier. Submitted by The National Library of Australia.

  • Added in V55

    Release date
    4 January 2012

    Enhanced Compression Wavelet: Signature developed through PRONOM Research.

    Enhanced Compression Wavelet: Partial entry added. Submission from the Geospatial Multistate Access and Preservation Partnership (GeoMAPP).