Frequently asked questions about CineSat
		CineSat Inputs and Requirements     Which satellites are supported ?     Meteosat 2nd Generation     Satellite image requirements     Additional input data     What computer do I need to operate CineSat ?               CineSat Integration     What do I need to operate CineSat ?     What user interfaces does CineSat offer ?     Visualization of results with my own display system     Using CineSat products by my own applications     Result file formats     Integration to Windows NT/XP               Meteorological Questions     Why not use NWP model winds for nowcasting ?     Cloud Motion Winds or Atmospheric Motion Fields ?     Weather radar     Use of large scale satellite images in Air Traffic Control     Nowcasting accuracy             Please do not hesitate to contact the CineSat Support Team to answer your specific questions.
	Which satellites are supported by CineSat ?			FAQ
	Top	CineSat accepts the (half-)hourly, high-resolution digital data from all current geostationary meteorological satellites. As soon as available, it will also process the 15-minute Meteosat 2nd Generation data. More on MSG ... More on image requirements ...
	Meteosat 2nd Generation			FAQ
	Top	CineSat is already prepared to handle Meteosat 2nd Generation (MSG) images that will be available in 2003. MSG satellites will take images of 12 spectral channels (instead of 3) at a resolution of 1 to 2.5 km (instead of 2.5 to 5 km) and in intervals of 15 minutes (instead of 30 minutes) The data volumn will increase by a factor of 14 compared to the current Meteosat satellites. The mean uncompressed data size will be about 270 MB every 15 minutes. CineSat is a full 16/24 bit image processing system and can of course handle and exploit all high-resolution MSG channels in full 8-bit, 10-bit, and 12-bit resolution. With CineSat you can convert between different channel bit depths and explore your data in highest available quality. Performance: Currently, CineSat processes all 3 spectral channels of Meteosat (and of all other geostationary satellites) in real-time on the standard CineSat Server. This server has enough spare resources and will be fast enough to process at least 3 channels of MSG images in real-time. Full processing of all spectral MSG channels in full resolution may require a server upgrade or additional servers. Data ingest: The formats of MSG images that are being output by the various image reception systems from different vendors have not yet been completely defined. But it can be assumed that conversion to a standard graphics format will not be a major issue - thus leaving the CineSat interface untouched. Configuration: The new image material will require appropriate configuration of all nowcasting parameters. Such parameters will be published as soon as tests with the first images have been conducted. Since all of CineSat's configuration and data interfaces are open and documented, the integration of MSG data can in principle be done by the end-user, but will of course be part of standard CineSat upgrade deliveries.
	How can I display CineSat's forecast products in my existing environment ?			FAQ
	Top	At most sites CineSat is fully integrated into the site-specific data processing. This means that it takes satellite images in a (possibly non-standard) site specific format and provides all (image) results in exactly the same format again. This allows for an easy display of computed nowcasting products with existing site-specific display facilities. CineSat comes with a simple web-based result file viewer and a Java based universal image browser. But for typical meteorological applications you will need the combination of CineSat's analysis and forecast products with your other data sets. Therefore, the use of a separate meteorological data display is recommended.
	Result File Formats			FAQ
	Top	CineSat provides results in flat files that reside in a configurable directory structure. Basically, there are two different types of results: image products and tables Examples for image products are predicted images interpolated image movies weather displays with burnt-in overlays like coastlines, a geographical net, some cities and locations, plus convective cell positions or motion vectors or trajectories Example table results are motion vector properties like vector coordinates, speed, direction, temperature, and height polygon coordinates of predicted trajectories positions and properties of detected convective cells The tables can be exported either as simple, multi-column ASCII list or as binary tables. The standard CSV format (comma-separated-values) offers you the interesting option to directly ingest CineSat analysis and forecast tables directly to spreadsheet applications (like e.g. MS-Excel) or data bases. Supported standard image output formats are: PNG, Portable Network Graphics Sun Raster Graphics Windows Bitmap PBM, PGM, and PPM (Portable Bitmaps) PIF / XPIF (Processed Image Format of VCS PDUS station) Frequently, CineSat takes images in a (non-standard) site specific format and provides results in exactly the same format again. This allows for an easy display of all computed weather products with site-specific display facilities and for an easy integration to other site-specific applications.
	How can I use CineSat products by my own applications ?			FAQ
	Top	CineSat provides many interesting data sets that can be further used by your own applications, e.g.: Reprojected, filtered, corrected, or declouded images can be passed on to your display software CineSat produces customizable ready-to-publish weather graphic products for your clients' web browsers CineSat position, vector and trajectory overlays can be displayed in your existing display facility. The ASCII coordinate lists of positions, vectors and trajectory polygons (as well as their attributes) can be converted to or directly ingested by your display program. This allows you to combine these data with your other data sets. Positions and properties of detected convective cells can be passed over to further processing systems that e.g. cross-check the locations with lightning data or with detected weather radar rain cells. CineSat can either pass it's result data to your existing processing or invoke your processing modules as part of the Automatic Product Extraction. As a special feature, you can also invoke all CineSat functions from your own processing scripts. All results are provided in open and documented standard formats. See also Result file formats, and Example User Applications
	How can CineSat be integrated into a Windows NT/XP user display station environment ?			FAQ
	Top	* * * A nice mixed solution: CineSat & Windows NT/XP * * * CineSat runs on a high-performance Unix Server under the Linux operating system. When plugged into a user´s network, it reads the input data from the network and provides forecast products as flat files in an exported directory to the network. Optionally, CineSat can fetch its inputs from an FTP server and distribute its results to a set of configured recipients (by FTP or RCP). Since the CineSat Server runs under the Linux operating system, it comes with the SAMBA server software that perfectly acts as Windows file server. This will be an easy way to integrate CineSat into a Windows NT/XP data display environment. Additionally, CineSat can produce image data formats like PNG and Windows Bitmap and the CSV table format that can all be easily handled on Windows machines by standard office applications. This means: The computing intensive part (CineSat) runs on a "black box" in the network and the access to the forecast results is made from any convenient user platform including Unix and Windows workstations.
	Why does CineSat not use NWP model winds for nowcasting ?			FAQ
		NWP (numerical weather prediction) model wind data do not provide the kind of information that is required to predict the future position of cloud systems. The NWP winds estimate real winds and not cloud motion. For nowcasting it is important to know where a cloud system will move to and at what speed. This information is often correlated with but not strictly determined by winds. There are many situations where a wind based cloud forecast would fail completely. By directly measuring cloud motion from satellite imagery, CineSat can implicitly take into account also topographic influence on cloud movement. The following drawing shows a typical situation at a mountain ridge, where a strong wind blows, but clouds are standing still. Wind speed is drawn in red and cloud motion in green.
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	What is the difference between the Cloud Motion Winds produced e.g. by Eumetsat and CineSat's atmospheric motion fields ?			FAQ
	Top	Most satellite image providers (like Eumetsat) run a so-called Cloud Motion Wind extraction scheme. These data are valuable to the meteorological community, but cannot be used for computing the CineSat nowcasting products, due to the following reasons: Cloud motion winds are not available in real-time to the end-user (i.e. several minutes after image reception) Cloud motion winds are only quality controlled, but not quality enhanced, i.e. they do not describe a meteorologically consistent atmospheric flow CineSat atmospheric motion fields are computed on a much denser grid CineSat can of course be configured to produce also Cloud Motion Winds, but the main application is to compute a meteorological consistent atmospheric flow on which a prediction of the future cloud motion can be based.
	Can CineSat process weather radar images ?			FAQ
	Top	A 2-dimensional radar image - yes, but with care. CineSat allows to process any image sequence that is provided in an appropriate data format. But radar images usually introduce the following problems: low resolution of the response signal (mostly only 3 bits compared to the 8 bits of a satellite image) small image size missing radar sectors (in a radar composite image) ground echoes These will require future development work to end up with robust and accurate nowcasting products. The CineSat team is currently searching for partners that are interested in a joint development of a radar based nowcasting facility. But - Good experiences have been made at the German met. office with the following approach: Rain cells are being detected from the weather radar by a separate software. The predicted CineSat infra-red atmospheric motion fields are then applied to these cell locations to predict their future movements. This works fine, since these cells are strictly related to a cloud movement that can be accurately measured from an infra-red image.
	How are the large scale satellite images used in air traffic control ?			FAQ
	Top	The geographical resolution of images from the current geostationary satellites is in the range from 2.5 to 5 km at the sub-satellite point on the equator and up to 8 km in Northern and Southern countries. Additionally, atmospheric motion analysis (cloud pattern tracking) requires a structured image area that can be traced and hence usually works with patches of 32 x 32 pixels, i.e. 150 x 150 km. So you may ask how these large scale data sources can be used for ATC applications. CineSat helps you to accurately estimate the speed and direction of frontal systems and also gives you a good approximation of the movement of convective cloud systems (even if they change rapidly over the nowcast time range). It has been observed that most small cloud cells follow this measured flow, although these cells are significantly smaller than the patch size - or even smaller than the pixel resolution. This effect also allows to apply CineSat´s cloud motion prediction to rain cells identified in high resolution weather radar. In addition, CineSat runs some new data extraction schemes that work down to pixel level (i.e. in the range of 2.5 to 5 km) - e.g. cloud development and cloud cell analysis. The Austrian Air Traffic Control Authority reported already during the first weeks of installation quite interesting savings of money for the Austrian Airline. With CineSat they could e.g. schedule flights that would have been descheduled otherwise. They also could issue critical thunderstorm warnings that were correct but in contradiction to other meteo data sources.
	How accurate are CineSat's nowcasts ?			FAQ
	Top	Since CineSat is used mainly for daily operational work at meteo offices and air traffic control authorities, and hardly in research institutes, there are currently no statistics available about CineSat performance. But it can be stated that the CineSat nowcasting products are significantly better than any other forecast data (for the nowcasting time range of 2-3 hours). This is not only due to the validated and verified algorithms of the package but mainly because these nowcasts are based on the most recent and exhaustive measurements available - the satellite images. And CineSat is currently the only software package that allows to analyse and predict them in real-time. The basic methods have been developed over several years and have been validated and verified by the European Space Agency. The CineSat nowcasting products are in operational use at the Central Austrian met. institute (ZAMG) and the German met. office (DWD) since more than 4 years. After an extensive period of product validation and improvement at these sites, CineSat has been released in 1998 for a broader market. We will publish user reports as soon as available.
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