Orthomosaic Export Error: Unsupported Data Type: Float 16

[March Castle]

When attempting to export an Orthomosaic as a TIFF, I receive the following error:

'Unsupported Data Type: Float 16'

Does this refer to the source images, or the TIFF i'm exporting?

I've always used 16 bit TIFFs as the source images used to generate the Orthophoto and they have not created errors before - but I have recently updated to a later version of Metashape (1.6.5 / 11249) so perhaps there has been a change in the software?

Thanks for your help.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello March Castle,

Can you please provide the screenshot of the Export Orthomosaic dialog with the parameters that you are using?

[PROBERT1968]

I deal with that sometimes... as long as they are in black and white orthophotos ? Are they in color photos ?

If you have ERDAS Imagine or any, you should be able to export it to 8 bit .

[March Castle]

I have attached an image of the Export dialogue.

They are 16-bit 3 channel RGB images.

I am able to successfully export a DEM using these images and I have used these images to successfully create an Orthophoto in the past.

I am trying to reduce the resolution so that it cuts down on processing when using other programs - could changing the pixel size be the source of the problem?

Thanks for your help.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello March,

Is there any difference, if you switch the background color option from White to Black, but keep all the other settings the same?

Please also specify, which information do you see in the Colors line related to the orthomosaic in Chunk Info dialog or in the exported PDF report?

[PROBERT1968]

That will not work. It only exports out to the same as you seen in Agisoft Metashape.  It must be the individual  photo or all of them , do they ?

Can you show us the screenshot of that photo along with the metadata or its details ?

let me give you an example, If I load a few black and white aerial photos to Metashape, if one of them is a 16 bit shows me a black screen. I immediately knew it is a 16 bit and I review  it.

So, that 16 bit aerial photo  I have , I then went back to ERDAS and export the same photo to another TIFF but change it to 8 bit.

Then bring that TIFF back to Metashape and it show normal aerial photo with black and white ..

Do you get what I mean ?

When you load them to align the photos , do they show you exactly what they should be ?

[March Castle]

I have tried changing the background colour - unfortunately it produced the same error.

The images display as you would expect an unprocessed JPEG to appear - i.e the colours and tones are close to natural.

I have attached a screenshot of the workspace so that you can see the details.

Thanks for your help once again.

[PROBERT1968]

I see that they all are in TIFF as you showed and they are 3 RGB Float 16 bit.

I googled but didn't find any solution to it but I found that might be helpful about raster : https://gisgeography.com/unsigned-integer-signed-integer-raster-data/

Also, you could try and take one of them and change it to 16 bit unsigned and compare if they both are in the same color .........

And according to your statement that in the past you had no problem export orthomosaic in a 16 bits, I wonder if they were the same as float 16 bit or a different data type ?  Do you still have them and if so perhaps go back and check if they are in 16 bits float if possible ?

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello March,

Does the color information related to orthomosaic is the same, as for the input images?

[March Castle]

I have tried using an older version - 1.6.1 (Build 10009) 64 Bit - and I am able to export Orthomosaics without errors using the same image set, so this seems to be an issue with newer versions only.
Can you suggest any changes since this version that may cause this error?

Thanks to everyone for their assistance with this.

[March Castle]

I am having problems solving the following error when attempting to export an Orthomosaic:


2021-01-29 11:01:55 Agisoft Metashape Professional Version: 1.6.6 build 11715 (64 bit)
2021-01-29 11:01:55 Platform: Windows
2021-01-29 11:01:55 CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2640 v4 @ 2.40GHz (server)
2021-01-29 11:01:55 CPU family: 6 model: 79 signature: 406F1h
2021-01-29 11:01:55 RAM: 63.9 GB
2021-01-29 11:01:56 OpenGL Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
2021-01-29 11:01:56 OpenGL Renderer: Quadro K6000/PCIe/SSE2
2021-01-29 11:01:56 OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 452.57
2021-01-29 11:01:56 Maximum Texture Size: 16384
2021-01-29 11:01:56 Quad Buffered Stereo: not enabled
2021-01-29 11:01:56 ARB_vertex_buffer_object: supported
2021-01-29 11:01:56 ARB_texture_non_power_of_two: supported
2021-01-29 11:16:54 LoadProject: path = Y:/2019_Images/2019_JIC/NIR_AllCorrect/JIC_2019_020719_NIR.psx
2021-01-29 11:16:54 Loading project...
2021-01-29 11:17:28 loaded project in 33.684 sec
2021-01-29 11:17:28 Finished processing in 33.685 sec (exit code 1)
2021-01-29 11:19:59 ExportOrthomosaic: block_height = 1024, block_width = 1024, clip_to_boundary = off, image_format = TIFF, path = Y:/2019_Images/2019_JIC/NIR_AllCorrect/JIC_2019_020719_NIR_Ortho.tif, projection = WGS 84 / UTM zone 30N, resolution_x = 0.010498199999999999, resolution_y = 0.010498199999999999, save_alpha = off
2021-01-29 11:19:59 Exporting orthomosaic...
2021-01-29 11:19:59 generating 11749 x 13427 raster in 1 x 1 tiles
2021-01-29 11:20:07 Finished processing in 8.402 sec (exit code 0)
2021-01-29 11:20:07 Error: Unsupported data type: float16


I am experiencing this error in versions from 1.6.6 build 11715 to 1.7.1 build 11797.

I have discovered by chance that this error was not produced when using version 1.6.1 build 10009 - as this was installed on another machine that had not been updated for a while.
This version is able to export Orthomosaics using the same files containing the same image data that the newer versions of Metashape are not able to, so I know it is not the .psx file, or the images that are causing the problems.

Strangely, the export DEM command works fine when using the newer versions - so I know this error is limited to the 'Export Orthomosaic' command in the newer versions.

The images I am using are from 1 of 2 cameras - either from an RGB camera outputting 48 Bit Uncompressed TIFFs or a NIR Adapted Camera outputting 16 Bit Uncompressed TIFFs, but image sets from both cameras produce this error.

Do you know what may have changed between versions 1.6.1 and 1.6.6 that is causing this error? (If I had access to the versions between them I could narrow it down to the precise version which contains the update which causes this error)

Thanks for your help.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello March,

Please send the example of the original image from this dataset to support@agisoft.com along with the PDF report exported from the completely processed project.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello March, please check if workaround with setting the background color on export to black solves the orthomosaic export problem for this project.

[Invaidor]

If you export it as tiled 1024*1024, jpeg with world file do you get the same problem as I have when I export?
The empty tiles with background color dosent get an world file.

This would be helpful to figure out my problem.