Re: NCL operationally

Hi all,

In my experience the fastest PS/PDF to PNG
conversion utility is `pstoimg'.
Specially for converting multiple files.

When compared to `convert', pstoimg is not only faster,
but the resulting PNG files are
usually smaller and of better quality than the corresponding
PNG files from convert.

The following line is an example for converting PDF to PNG files,
one PNG for PDF page:

pstoimg -trans -interlace \
         -type png -density 120 -crop a \
         -multi *.pdf

Álvaro.

Christian Pagé wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Having written a huge NCL script to produce a great number of
> semi-operational plots, I can confirm that writing to PS then converting
> to GIF or PNG usign convert is very slow for a large number of images. I
> have gain a lot of performance writing instead in NCGM with a proper
> resolution setting, and then converting to GIF or PNG using convert
> without much loss of image quality.
>
> Christian
> http://meteocentre.com/home_e.html
>
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 16:08, <Oliver.Fuhrer_at_meteoswiss.ch> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> We are currently benchmarking NCL against MetView (from ECMWF). The
> goal would be to use NCL operationally to produce plots of our model
> output. Most of these products are produced in time-critical mode.
>
> Currently, there seem to be two bottlenecks that are slowing NCL
> down considerably as compared to MetView. The first is the reading
> of our model output in grib1 format. After offline conversion using
> ncl_convert2nc to NetCDF format and execution of the same script
> simply reading a couple of fields from a couple of files, the script
> runs 10x faster. The second is the generation of raster graphics
> using NCL. A lot of our plots are disseminated in PNG or GIF format.
> MetView can directly write these formats whereas NCL writes a PS or
> PDF and the raster format is produced using the "convert" utility.
>
> 1) I would be very much interested in future plans for NCL
> concerning these two points.
>
> 2) Would a generation of NCGM and conversion using ctrans to a
> raster format bring any gain in performance?
>
> Thanks and kind regards,
> Oliver
>
>
> ________________________________________
>
> Oliver Fuhrer
> Numerical Models
>
> Federal Departement of Home Affairs FDHA
> Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss
>
> Kraehbuehlstrasse 58, P.O. Box 514, CH-8044 Zurich, Switzerland
>
> Tel. +41 44 256 93 59
> Fax +41 44 256 92 78
> oliver.fuhrer_at_meteoswiss.ch
> www.meteoswiss.ch <http://www.meteoswiss.ch> - First-hand information
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ncl-talk mailing list
> List instructions, subscriber options, unsubscribe:
> http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/ncl-talk
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> ncl-talk mailing list
> List instructions, subscriber options, unsubscribe:
> http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/ncl-talk

-- 
Álvaro M. Valdebenito B.                      alvaro.valdebenito_at_met.no
Air Pollution Section/Research Department     Tel. +47-2296 3397
Norwegian Meteorological Institute            http:\\www.met.no
P.O. Box 43 Blindern, 0313 Oslo, NORWAY       http:\\www.emep.int/CWF
_______________________________________________
ncl-talk mailing list
List instructions, subscriber options, unsubscribe:
http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/ncl-talk