[gdal-dev] Using GDAL to process embedded JPEG2000 images within a NITF file

[aestrada]

All,

I recently downloaded the GDAL1.5 source code and built my own DLL (on
the Windows platform), adding support for OGDI and MrSID by obtaining
the necessary libraries and modifying the NMAKE.OPT file (uncommenting
some lines) - I also converted the necessary projects over to Visual
Studio 2005 (8.0). I was successful in this and got GDAL to process
the files I needed.

Now for the problem I'm having. Using another dataset, I was trying to
process embedded JPEG2000 images within a NITF file and received the
following errors:

ERROR 4: 'J2K_SUBFILE:3884,542714864,D:\xxxxxx.NTF' does not exist in
the file system,

and is not recognised as a supported dataset name.

ERROR 1: Unable to open JPEG2000 image within NITF file.

Is the JP2KAK driver available?

So I tried to add support for embedded JPEG2000 images within a NITF
file by following the same type of procedure. First I tried to build
in support for JASPER, thinking that this would be the "free" way to
get JPEG2000 support (JP2KAK costs too much!!!). I was able to build
this support in, but I still get the same error messages from GDAL as
shown above. Then I tried building in support for ECW, thinking it
could possibly be used to uncompress the JPEG2000. However, I can't
get the ECW component to build - mainly because of compatibility
problems with its source code and the version of Visual Studio I'm
using (8 vs. 7.1). My question is: if I can get libecwj2.lib to build
(or ncsecw.dll, ncsutil.dll and ncsnet.dll), will this help solve my
problem (of getting GDAL to convert the embedded JPEG2000 images
within NITF)?

Please let me know if this is the right path to go down and, if it is,
can you provide any help in getting ECW to build in my environment?

In search of another solution, I tried the following... I used the
FWTOOLS version of GDAL and was able to successfully process the
embedded JPEG2000 images within NITF, although I 'm not sure
specifically which driver(s) it used to do the processing. As a
possible solution to my problem, I wanted to know if I could use these
DLLs and freely distribute them. If so, is there anything in addition
to what's in your LICENSE.TXT file that I would need to display to an
end user?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give,

AWE