[Liblas-devel] LASzip versus LT compressor

Martin Isenburg martin.isenburg at gmail.com
Wed Apr 27 11:54:53 EDT 2011


hi,

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 8:28 AM, Michael P. Gerlek <mpg at flaxen.com> wrote:

> Martin, can you give the data below in terms of compression ratio against
> the original file sizes?
>
>
sure.

SID  LAZ   file_name  original_file_size (MB)

3.1    5.9     autzen-colorized-1.2-3.las    345
2.8    7.0     Dallas.las    100
6.9    7.2     GrassLakeSmall.las    118
3.3    8.3     IowaDNR-CloudPeakSoft-1.0-UTM15N.las    156
6.5    7.4     LAS12_Sample_withRGB_QT_Modeler.las    95
4.3    4.6     LASFile_1.las    46
4.5    4.8     LASFile_2.las    42
4.2    4.6     LASFile_3.las    16
4.5    4.9     LASFile_4.las    46
4.4    4.7     LDR030828_212242_0.las    57
4.5    4.8     LDR030828_213023_0.las    56
4.3    4.6     LDR030828_213450_0.las    51
2.8    5.2     LDR091111_181233_1.las    52
2.8    5.3     LDR091111_182803_1.las    52
2.8    5.1     Ldr100402_220229_1.las    1781
6.1    6.5     Lincoln.las    177
4.0    3.8     line_27007_dd.las    103
6.3    8.3     MARS_Sample_Filtered_LiDAR.las    156
2.8    5.2     merrick_vertical_1.2.las    52
12.9    12.2     MountStHelensNov202004.las    110
6.4    6.6     MountStHelensOct42004.las    129
3.1    3.3     ncwc000008.las    60
6.5    6.8     PalmBeachPreHurricane.las    49
8.0    8.6     radiohead_data1.las    397
8.0    8.7     radiohead_data2.las    433
3.4    7.9     S1C1_strip021.las    75
3.3    9.1     SerpentMoundModelLASData.las    87
2.8    5.8     Tetons.las    100
2.9    5.3     USACE_Merrick_lots_of_VLRs.las    96
9.7    10.5     xyzrgb_manuscript.las    53

 Also, are you willing to report the timing data?
>

for the 1.7 GB file it took LASzip 1:33 min to encode and 1:35 min to
decode. it took the LT compressor 18:26 min to encode and 4:46 min to
decode. your own mpg will vary depending on disk and compressor speeds ...

cheers,

martin @lastools


> *From:* liblas-devel-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:
> liblas-devel-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *Martin Isenburg
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 27, 2011 8:12 AM
> *To:* liblas-devel at lists.osgeo.org
> *Subject:* [Liblas-devel] LASzip versus LT compressor
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
> People sometimes ask me how LASzip compares to the LIDAR compressor from
> Lizard Tech and I usually refer them to Michael's email (see below). Because
> his benchmarking was wrong on one model, namely MG4 does not outperform
> LASzip on 2398_400.las, i did my own experiments that suggest that LASzip
> compresses about 35% better and is faster.
>
> A set of 27 LAS files (see below for a listing) compresses to 403 MB with
> LASzip and to 610 MB with the LIDAR compressor from Lizard Tech.
>
> A 1.7GB LAS file of a flight swath (see below for the details) compresses
> to 352 MB with LASzip and to 648 MB with the LIDAR compressor from Lizard
> Tech. LASzip encoding is about 10 times faster. LASzip decoding is about 3
> times faster. timings measurements included all disk I/O from compressed
> file to uncompressed file (and vice-versa) using two separate drives.
> disclaimer: the LASzip compressor is tuned for LAS files that contain LIDAR
> in acquisition order.
>
> Cheers,
>
> martin @lastools
>
> the list of 27 LAS files. the first number is the compressed file size in
> bytes for the LIDAR Compressor of Lizardtech. the second number is the
> compressed file size in bytes for LASzip. all files can be found here
> http://liblas.org/samples except "Dallas.las" and "Tetons.las" which are
> here: http://bin.us.lizardtech.com/lidar/LT_LiDAR_Sample_Data.zip
>
> 115,857,121    61,809,700     autzen-colorized-1.2-3.las
> 37,462,947    14,881,473     Dallas.las
> 18,035,893    17,128,065     GrassLakeSmall.las
> 48,947,417    19,621,507     IowaDNR-CloudPeakSoft-1.0-UTM15N.las
> 15,248,628    13,382,538     LAS12_Sample_withRGB_QT_Modeler.las
> 11,222,840    10,444,300     LASFile_1.las
> 9,805,767    9,154,780     LASFile_2.las
> 3,966,869    3,665,433     LASFile_3.las
> 10,691,410    9,940,731     LASFile_4.las
> 13,522,405    12,672,774     LDR030828_212242_0.las
> 13,058,811    12,157,072     LDR030828_213023_0.las
> 12,244,190    11,502,895     LDR030828_213450_0.las
> 19,820,246    10,414,626     LDR091111_181233_1.las
> 19,424,894    10,193,907     LDR091111_182803_1.las
> 30,451,604    28,680,682     Lincoln.las
> 27,076,520    28,593,056     line_27007_dd.las
> 25,753,118    19,594,207     MARS_Sample_Filtered_LiDAR.las
> 19,820,246    10,414,626     merrick_vertical_1.2.las
> 8,943,713    9,493,209     MountStHelensNov202004.las
> 20,937,807    20,337,536     MountStHelensOct42004.las
> 20,386,038    19,036,134     ncwc000008.las
> 7,900,248    7,539,341     PalmBeachPreHurricane.las
> 22,831,603    9,920,385     S1C1_strip021.las
> 28,006,302    10,036,738     SerpentMoundModelLASData.las
> 37,216,167    18,169,153     Tetons.las
> 34,980,891    18,961,597     USACE_Merrick_lots_of_VLRs.las
> 5,756,508    5,351,794     xyzrgb_manuscript.las
>
> the lasinfo details of the 1.7GB LAS file containing one swath
>
> lasinfo Ldr100402_220229_1.laz
> reporting all LAS header entries:
>   file signature:            'LASF'
>   file source ID:            0
>   reserved (global_encoding):0
>   project ID GUID data 1-4:  0 0 0 ''
>   version major.minor:       1.0
>   system identifier:         'ALSXX'
>   generating software:       'ALSXX_PP V2.69 BUILD#7 BETA'
>   file creation day/year:    92/2010
>   header size                227
>   offset to point data       5697
>   number var. length records 4
>   point data format          1
>   point data record length   28
>   number of point records    66705904
>   number of points by return 58445315 6743224 1404140 113225 0
>   scale factor x y z         0.001 0.001 0.001
>   offset x y z               13000000 0 0
>   min x y z                  12991192.425 588397.501 611.122
>   max x y z                  13142242.349 594146.283 3032.417
> variable length header record 1 of 4:
>   reserved             43707
>   user ID              'LeicaGeo'
>   record ID            1001
>   length after header  5120
>   description          ''
> variable length header record 2 of 4:
>   reserved             43707
>   user ID              'LeicaGeo'
>   record ID            1002
>   length after header  22
>   description          'MissionInfo'
> variable length header record 3 of 4:
>   reserved             43707
>   user ID              'LeicaGeo'
>   record ID            1003
>   length after header  54
>   description          'UserInputs'
> variable length header record 4 of 4:
>   reserved             43707
>   user ID              'LASF_Projection'
>   record ID            34735
>   length after header  56
>   description          'Projection Info'
>     GeoKeyDirectoryTag version 1.1.0 number of keys 6
>       key 1024 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 1 -
> GTModelTypeGeoKey: ModelTypeProjected
>       key 1025 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 2 -
> GTRasterTypeGeoKey: RasterPixelIsPoint
>       key 3076 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 26990 -
> ProjLinearUnitsGeoKey: look-up for 26990 not implemented
>       key 2052 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 9002 -
> GeogLinearUnitsGeoKey: Linear_Foot
>       key 4096 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 5103 -
> VerticalCSTypeGeoKey: VertCS_North_American_Vertical_Datum_1988
>       key 4099 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 9002 -
> VerticalUnitsGeoKey: Linear_Foot
> the header is followed by 2 user-defined bytes
> LASzip compression (version 1.0r0 c1): POINT10 1 GPSTIME11 1
> reporting minimum and maximum for all LAS point record entries ...
>   x -8807574 142242349
>   y 588397501 594146283
>   z 611122 3032417
>   intensity 0 255
>   edge_of_flight_line 0 0
>   scan_direction_flag 0 1
>   number_of_returns_of_given_pulse 1 4
>   return_number 1 4
>   classification 1 1
>   scan_angle_rank -26 31
>   user_data 161 255
>   point_source_ID 161 511
>   gps_time 511349.016753 512063.402540
> overview over number of returns of given pulse: 51686151 10678566 3886669
> 454518 0 0 0
> histogram of classification of points:
>  66705904 Unclassified (1)
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> michael's email (the graphs he mentions can be found in the archive)
>
> http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/liblas-devel/2011-February/001199.html
>
> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Michael Rosen <mrosen at lizardtech.com>
> wrote:
>
> Here’s the summary of some LT-internal (I guess not so internal now…)
> benchmarking.  Highlights:
>
> -          I can’t really draw any conclusions about relative compression
> sizes:  2398_400 favors MG4 2:1, HGAC_Extract and AutZen favor LAZ 2:1,
> MtStHelens is a wash,
>
> -          WRT extraction time, for smaller files, the MG4’s computational
> overhead (*) favors LAZ for all but the smallest extractions
>
> -          For larger files, the “break even” point is much further to the
> right.
>
> -          For larger files, with very small extractions, the built-in
> index of MG4 allows faster extractions than raw (unindexed) LAS.
>
>
>
> The methodology here was to run “las2las” as shown before cropping out
> increasingly large rectangles (at full resolution)
>
> I compared this with the same extraction from MG4 using a command line tool
> (internal) but this time, writing the output to a las file.
>
>
>
> I spot checked that the number of points written in all three cases was the
> same.
>
>
>
> (*) Note that the title on the graphs is not quite right.  It’s not “Decode
> Time” but “Decode Time plus LAS Write Time” vs Scene Size.  There is some
> speculation (based on what we were observing when omitting the output) that
> LT’s LAS Writer is unusually slow.  It’s using the liblas v1.2 writer … so
> some here may have well-informed opinions on this.
>
>
>
> Here is some raw data and some graphs:
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  03:50 PM        61,301,311 2398_400.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:28 PM         8,906,275 2398_400.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:25 PM         4,650,992 2398_400.sid
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  04:03 PM       362,213,959 autzen-colorized-1.2-3.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:28 PM        61,809,700 autzen-colorized-1.2-3.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:27 PM       115,857,121 autzen-colorized-1.2-3.sid
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  03:59 PM       123,876,781 Grass Lake Small.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:29 PM        17,128,065 Grass Lake Small.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:25 PM        18,035,893 Grass Lake Small.sid
>
>
>
> 02/02/2011  08:18 AM       711,065,603 HGAC_Extract.las
>
> 02/02/2011  08:23 AM       151,159,393 HGAC_Extract.laz
>
> 02/02/2011  08:29 AM       269,491,108 HGAC_Extract.sid
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  03:50 PM        34,065,751 hobu.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:29 PM         7,732,878 hobu.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:24 PM         9,301,431 hobu.sid
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  04:00 PM       185,565,975 Lincoln.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:29 PM        28,680,682 Lincoln.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:25 PM        30,451,604 Lincoln.sid
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  03:58 PM       107,603,879 line_27007.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:30 PM        22,269,252 line_27007.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:25 PM        24,588,596 line_27007.sid
>
>
>
> 01/28/2011  03:58 PM       115,737,877 MtStHelens.las
>
> 01/28/2011  04:30 PM         9,493,209 MtStHelens.laz
>
> 01/28/2011  04:24 PM         8,943,713 MtStHelens.sid
>
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