ECW support in Linux

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Tom

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Feb 22, 2016, 4:29:34 AM2/22/16
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Can I ask any of the wizards out there to provide clear instructions on
installing ecw support in Linux ( Ubuntu )

I have tried a number of instruction sets from various searches to no avail.

I am using Lyon on Ubuntu 15.10

Tom Mesilane
Latrobe City Council

Jan D

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Jun 18, 2017, 4:37:08 AM6/18/17
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Same question here: I can't seem to get QGIS to read (don't need write option) ECW formats on Linux (QGIS 2.14, Ubuntu 17.04, gdal 2.1)

Any thoughts on how to do this?

-Jan

Thomas McAdam

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Jun 18, 2017, 9:47:37 AM6/18/17
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Hi Jan

Looks like it is still supported (http://www.gdal.org/frmt_ecw.html). I'm guessing you will need to compile GDAL with it enabled, then replace your system version of GDAL with the new one. It will proabably be a bit painful. I think it doesn't come as standard in Linux as there is no way to agree to the ECW license terms when you install through Aptitude. Using Windows you get a couple of license agreements when you install QGIS. 

Might be easier to convert all your ECWs to compressed GeoTiffs in a Windows machine, the compression isn't as good as ECW but it's not far off, and the quality and performance are compareable. If you want to go down that road I have some commands with all the parameters that I can give you. 
Tom



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Thomas McAdam

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Jun 18, 2017, 9:51:43 AM6/18/17
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Oh yeah, forgot to say, did you try gdalinfo --formats | grep 'ECW'. I didn't get anything, that's why I presume GDAL isn't compiling coming with ECW as standard. 

Ramon Andinach

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Jun 18, 2017, 5:21:40 PM6/18/17
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ECW, being a proprietary format isn’t something that any of the OS groups are prepared to set up out of the box. The last time I did this (a couple of years ago) the supplied GDAL binary *was* compiled to allow ECW, but you needed to provide the ECW library binary (download from Hexagon) and a plugin bridge. This last bit was what was becoming difficult to find. 

I have some notes somewhere, but as I say out of date now.

It’s also only just Monday, and you might get a better answer later in the day.

Ramon.

Jan D

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Jun 25, 2017, 7:16:02 PM6/25/17
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From what I seem to be reading from several sources, ECW support is not possible on newer versions of Ubuntu, since libgdal-ecw-src package had been developed for GDAL 1.10, and newer versions of GDAL use a newer version than 1.10. I need the newer versions, so I think I'm out of luck unless someone has a workaround.
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Nathan Woodrow

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Jun 25, 2017, 7:22:18 PM6/25/17
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Hey,

I can see the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK v5.3 (Linux) is on the hexogon website which means it should be possible to build GDAL on Linux against this to get support in QGIS.  This is the same SDK that Windows uses, well the Windows version at least  

We ship with ECW on Windows but not in Linux due to packaging issues on each one, some are more "pure" then others so best to avoid it all together. I don't suspect it's hard to make a build of GDAL on Linux using the ECW drivers but I have never tried.

Regards,
Nathan



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S Kolo

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Jun 26, 2017, 7:47:10 PM6/26/17
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There are instructions here (if that helps) - http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/ECW 

I've built several "non standard" formats in Debian/Linux like ESRI FileGDB, ECW, JP2(KAK) etc and all work fine.


Cheers,
Shaun

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