Sustainability of Digital Formats
Planning for Library of Congress Collections
Sustainability of Digital Formats
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| Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact | |
| Full name | BigTIFF |
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| Description |
Variant of the TIFF format that uses 64-bit offsets thereby supporting files up to 18,000 petabytes in size, vastly transcending TIFF's normal 4 GB limit. Since the format also supports all of the normal features and header tags of TIFF_6 and the extended metadata offered by GeoTIFF, it provides good service in the GIS domain, medical imaging, and other applications that employ large scanners or cameras. |
| Relationship to other formats | |
| Extension of | TIFF_6, TIFF, Revision 6.0 |
| Extension of | GeoTIFF_1_0, GeoTIFF Revision 1.0 |
| LC experience or existing holdings | |
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| LC preference |
| Disclosure | Open standard. |
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| Documentation | Specification ("The BigTIFF File Format Proposal") provided online by AWare Systems. |
| Adoption | BigTIFF is supported by the following software libraries:
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| Licensing and patents | The BigTIFF enhancements in Aperio’s libtiff were made by Ole Eichhorn (ole@aperio.com) of Aperio Technologies (www.aperio.com) and (in the words of the Web page) "are donated to the public domain, in gratitude to Sam Leffler, Silicon Graphics, Joris Van Damme, AWare Systems, Frank Warmerdam, Andrey Kisley, Mike Welles, and all who have worked on libtiff over the years to provide such a great tool. The aperio libtiff changes were published on an 'as is' basis and neither Ole Eichhorn nor Aperio Technologies make any warranty as to their fitness for any intended use." TIFF is a registered trademark of Aldus Corp., now owned by Adobe. |
| Transparency | Wrapper is as transparent as TIFF_6 |
| Self-documentation | Header provides some metadata. |
| External dependencies | None for the wrapper. |
| Technical protection considerations | Not applicable. |
| Still Image | |
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| Normal rendering | LibTiff 4.0 reads ClassicTIFF and BigTIFF both, and the application does not need to be aware which TIFF version an opened file is. |
| Clarity (high image resolution) |
Excellent support for images with very high spatial resolution. |
| GIS images and datasets | |
| Normal functionality | BigTIFF is supported in the GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library maintained by Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). See also GeoTIFF_1_0. |
| Support for GIS metadata | See GeoTIFF_1_0 |
| Support for grids | See GeoTIFF_1_0 |
| Tag | Value | Note |
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| Filename extension | btf |
Mentioned in the AWare systems specification. |
| Filename extension | tf8 |
Mentioned in the AWare systems specification. |
| Filename extension | tiff |
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| Filename extension | tif |
Mentioned in the AWare systems specification. |
| Filename extension | gtiff |
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| Internet Media Type | image/tiff |
See also TIFF_6 |
| General | BigTIFF is supported in the GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library maintained by Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). The BigTIFF format is also adopted by large format scanners, medical imaging, astronomy and in other fields of endeavor. |
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| History | The BigTIFF design was first proposed in 2004 by Joris Van Damme of AWare Systems and refined on the AWare Systems mailing list. Contributors to the AWare Systems design discussion included Lynn Quam, Frank Warmerdam, Chris Cox, Rob Tillaart, Dan Smith, Bob Freisenhahn, Andrey Kiselev, Phillip Crews, and Gerben Vos. In 2007 Aperio released a version of libtiff which supportd BigTIFF files. The BigTIFF enhancements in Aperio’s libtiff were made by Ole Eichhorn (ole@aperio.com) of Aperio Technologies (www.aperio.com) and (in the words of the Web page) "were donated to the public domain, in gratitude to Sam Leffler, Silicon Graphics, Joris Van Damme, Aware Systems, Frank Warmerdam, Andrey Kisley, Mike Welles, and all who had worked on libtiff over the years to provide such a great tool. The aperio libtiff changes were published on an 'as is' basis and neither Ole Eichhorn nor Aperio Technologies made or make any warranty as to their fitness for any intended use. In 2007, WeoGeo,Safe Software, Leica Geosystems, and ESRI sponsored Joris Van Damme & Frank Warmerdam (the libtiff and gdal maintainers) with a project for updating libtiff to LibTiff 4.0." The BigTIFF upgrade to LibTiff is in beta as of April 2011, and an explanation of why this status remains is provided in a message from Frank Warmerdam (consulted September 28, 2011). |
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