[Geotiff] GeoTIFF Size Limit

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 9/23/05, Bill Shelley <Bill.Shelley at gi.leica-geosystems.com> wrote:
> I am under the impression that the size limit on a GeoTIFF (or any TIFF) is either 2G or 4G.  Is this still true, and if so is it 2G or 4G?

Bill,

There is an effective file system limit at 4GB in TIFF files.  The proposed
BigTIFF can support much larger files, but is not widely supported
yet (only in Joris' code as far as I know).

I would add that files ranging between 2 and 4GB in size are a bit
dangerous from an interoperability point of view since many apps use
the 32bit signed integers for offsets (and 32bit fseek) and can't handle
up to 4GB.  But this isn't a limitation of the format, just a detail of
implementation in many software packages.

BTW, if any libtiff users out there are interested in financially supporting
BigTIFF support that could help expedite it's implementation.

Best regards,
--
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent