Why is Pix4D Ortho Regen So Slow Compared to Photoscan / Metashape?

First off I find it irritating I cannot generate different resolution orthomosaics without having to copy/move the file before generating a new one at a different GSD.  I have clients that have different workstation configs in their companies and purposes for the orthos so some may want (and their machine can handle) the full resolution and others need lower res.

What’s more irritating is that I can export orthos in Photoscan in less than a minute at various resolutions giving them different filenames.  As far as I can tell the workflow in Pix4D Mapper is

  1. Move the 3_dsm_ortho folder (to save the previous output so it doesn’t get overwritten)

  2. Change GSD and uncheck all outputs except the ortho output

It takes FOREVER, like 20 minutes to generate a new ortho when this same thing takes like 60 seconds in Photoscan.  

Am I missing something?

I may be better off loading the GeoTIFF in a 3rd party program (QGIS?) and resizing it there?  

 

 

Hi Jeff,

I find your feedback very valuable, thank you! I’m going to pass your suggestions to our team on the dedicated meeting.

Indeed, the workflow you described is correct. As a workaround, I recommend using the cloud. You can upload your results out there and share the link with your customers. Consequently, the ability to visualise the results won’t be based on hardware specifications but on the browser and the internet connection. However, it could only work if your customers not necessarily want to download the outputs but just to visualise them. In other cases, third-party software like QGIS sounds like a good option.

Regards!

I ran in to the same problem and asked the same question.  Support recommended I use QGIS.  It works great, fast, and holds the georeferencing metadata. Go to RASTER - CONVERSION - TRANSLATE. Select your input and Output file names, and check OUTSIZE for the percentage of the original size.  Works great, and you can export several resolutions.  Plus you don’t lose all the edits you made to the orthomosaic if you reprocess it.

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