Adding Raster Layer Support to Time Manager
So far, Time Manager has been limited to vector layers. Support for raster layers has been on the wish list for quite a while. I’ve been considering different approaches and for now I have settled with one that keeps the way how raster layers work as close to the workings of vector layers as possible:
All layers have to be loaded before they can be added to Time Manager. The layers are added one-by-one and start and end time values are defined. (This differs from vector layers where start/end attribute are defined instead.) All raster layers that are not within the current time frame are set to 100 % transparency.
I’m not certain yet whether this is a good approach though. I’ll probably keep trying different approaches for a while.
This is a screen cast of the current status:
The plugin source is available on Github, as usual. It’s still going to take a while until there will be a plugin package including this feature.
I’m looking forward to reading your comments here or on Youtube. Do you think this approach is usable?
Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings 
The raster feature of this plugin can be useful for studying urbanization from settelite images.
@underdark: thanks for sharing.
Thanks Faisal. Are you studying urbanization?
No I am Lecturer and teaching GIS/RS Application to Civil Engineers. And using QGIS package as application.
Study of urbanization is a reasearch project. In which I was asked for some suggestions.
But this plugin can be helpful in that.
This approach works great for me. I had to make just one very minor adjustment to timemanagercontrol.py. The ‘.%f’ in line 209 was causing an error – maybe because I’m using Python 2.5. Removing it and ‘.zzz’ solved the issue (though I’m sure it cost me a little precision).
I often have to review monthly inputs and outputs of a global biosphere model with other members of my team, so this plugin will be very useful. Thanks!
That’s great to hear. I’ll look into adding some error handling for the milliseconds. Thanks for your feedback!
Hi Underdark,
I read each and every post you make on this blog. Keep up the good work.
I will review the approach, raster images are indeed quite usefull for urbanization analysis from settelite images.Landast images vor example offer a variety of different time episodes. I did this during my study.
hello,
Time Manager looks to me very interested. Is it a simple interface visualiation or she can also do treatments, for example track the movement of the pixel on a time series and calculate the difference in pixel value at time t and at time t +1.
thank you
Time Manager helps you to navigate through existing spatio-temporal data. It does not calculate new values though. You could give Multiview plugin a try http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/multiview/
Ok thank for the answer.
But I have a problem with the format TimeManager date (% Y% M% D) which does not recognize my data.
Here is a sample of my time series:
1)MYD08_D3.A2004057.051.2009001024129.pscs_000500350323.Optical_Depth_Land_And_Ocean_Mean.G3.gridSubsetter.hdf
2)MYD08_D3.A2004058.051.2009001181825.pscs_000500350323.Optical_Depth_Land_And_Ocean_Mean.G3.gridSubsetter.hdf
3)MYD08_D3.A2004059.051.2009001130256.pscs_000500350323.Optical_Depth_Land_And_Ocean_Mean.G3.gridSubsetter.hdf
4)MYD08_D3.A2004060.051.2009001134811.pscs_000500350323.Optical_Depth_Land_And_Ocean_Mean.G3.gridSubsetter.hdf
You have to manually enter the dates in Settings. It shouldn’t matter at all what your layers/files are called.
Hello,
I can not find the plugin “TimeManager” in 1.8.0 version of QGIS Lisboa. Is it in this version of QGIS.
Thank you for your answer.
thank you
Yes, it’s available from http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/.
Ok thank you.
I would now like to export the video to put it in a powerpoint presentation. When I export from TimeManager I get more image files in PNG. How can I show this video to a powerpoint presentation.
Thank you in advance for your reply.
Windows Live Movie Maker does an ok job of converting image series to videos. Otherwise I use mencoder (command line tool). The command is mentioned on Time Manager Github page.
Hi there.
I have been experimenting with using the time manager plugin to show the change in land managment in a particular Farming district in South Africa. I am Interested in the Vernacular Architecture of the region and I hope that getting a handel on the land management will help in the analysis on the origin of the buildings. The only problem is that the time period I am studying spans from the late 1600s to the early 1900s. The version of Time Manager that i am using only allows for a time period to be displayed of several weeks. is there any plan in the future to extend the scope of time that can be managed by the plugin? or should i look for anouther version of time manager? I am currently using V 0.5
This plugin could be extremely powerful when used in the Fields of Archaeology and History. Please Keep up the good work.
Yes this is a known bug: https://github.com/anitagraser/TimeManager/issues/26. Due to limitations in Python’s datetime class, only a limited time range is supported. Support for bigger time ranges would require a major rewrite of plugin code and is currently not planned. Anyone interested in improving Time Manager is welcome to join me!
Hi!
Thanks for the plugin. Is it possible to have a text file with the Settings and just reading it in Time Manager?
Or do we have to use the Settings/Add layer button for each raster layer?
Also, could it be possible adding support for vrt files? vrt files are very convenient for multi-temporal and hyper-spectral images. The point would be getting all “bands” of a given vrt file automatically added to Time Manager just by selecting the vrt file.
Let me know if you need an example of a vrt file.
Agus
Hi Agus,
Currently, there is no real settings import. Settings are saved in the project file though and that could be edited.
Vrt files sound useful indeed. Feel free to open a feature request on the Time Manager Github page. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll find time to implement this in the foreseeable future. But feel free to give it a try yourself. I’d be glad to merge your code in.
Best wishes,
Anita