SID to TIFF sptail reference

[ursusncde]

Background: I've "inherited" a 21.4Gb MrSID air photo. ESRI ArcCatalog indicates a spatial reference of NAD83 State Plane Texas South Central FIPS 4204.

I need to use this as input to MultiSpec (Purdue) & ESRI ArcMap for habitat analyses.

I'm using trial versions of GeoExpress View & GeoExpress 7 to see if these tools will do the job.

Task: Tile the SID into (16 tiles) in a format compatible with MultiSpec (TIFF will work).

Mosaic thematic output from MultiSpec (16 TIFFs).

Problem: When I input the file to GeoExpress 7 & check properties, it does not show the spatial reference. It shows the CRS as "undefined".

I used GeoExpress View to create 16 TIFF tiles from the SID. These also have an "undefined" CRS.

In GeoExpress 7 using the MetaData Manager I see:
Record 8:
Tag: IMAGE::INPUT_NAME
Type: ASCII[1]
Data:
[0]: C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-01.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-02.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-03.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-04.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-05.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-06.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-07.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-08.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-09.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-10.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-11.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-12.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-13.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-14.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-15.tif, C:\4711\cb\CampBullis-16.tif

I don't have access to these or the - world files.
How is the spatial reference embedded in the SID file that ArcCatalog can read & why is that not interpreted by GeoExpress 7?

How can I create the tiles & have them spatailly referenced?

[rparker]

Typically, ArcGIS will not write the CRS information into the header of the TIFF, but rather in auxiliary files or a database somewhere so that it will recognize the image and apply the CRS it remembers.

Since there is no CRS in the header of the file, GeoExpress needs to be told what the CRS is. You can do this in GeoExpress 7:

select all of the images in the job list.
right-click on the images and select metadata
select the CRS the images are in and hit ok.

That will write the CRS information into the metadata of the new MrSID file.