Do you download Sentinel data via the Product Library in SNAP?
If yes, what are your experiences/complaints?
If no, what tools are you using for your downloads?
Please provide feedback, it is highly useful for us 
Dear Marcus Engdahl,
I donât use it for the following reasons :
- The spatial resolution of the âquick viewâ or whatever it is called is super coarse. I cannot distinguish my area of interest easily, which is not the case when using the official sci-hub
- It is super easy to script the download of an entire dataset in the official sci-hub. using aria2c.
Again, this is just one-manâs opinion of the subject.
Quentin
Thank you Quentin, Iâm trying to gauge how much effort should be put on improving data-access via the Product Library. Are you still using it for managing your local files?
I did not notice we could do that. I thought it was only to connect to the sci-hub
To answer your question, note that Iâm using a wide monitor (34 inches) WQHD for multi tasking / managing local files. Something like that :
So I didnât really felt the need for that functionality.
But for a user with a 15" laptop, thatâs maybe useful I donât know.
i always use Copernicus sci hub data portal due to its user friendly interface.
Ok thanks ⌠plese note that the Product Library does much more than the file explorer as it can traverse all your drives and subdirectories, generate quicklooks and then you can search from your products based on criteria like geographical area, product/sensor type etc.
Good to hear that is working well for you. Are you using the Product Library to manage/browse your local products?
Ok maybe I should give it a try.
I have tried several times and failed miserably. For example: Today is Thursday Feb 7 2019 at 4:02pm, am using SNAP 6.0 with all updates. The Product Library search is very slow. It just sits there at 55%, but finished after a few minutes. I drew a small box on the overview graphic trying to get two scenes of Mexico City to use for a batch of RUS webinar training. The Quick Viewâs size makes it painfully difficult to select a location. The two zooming buttons (A and magnifier) donât work, so I canât zoom in sufficiently to pick a small location. This needs to
be fixed. It probably overworks the searching on your end, because we necessarily must choose locations bigger than are required. Additionally, the Mission Type, Product Type, and Mode information is easily lost just by selecting another option, which is not helpful and has to be re-entered continually. The search yielded 57 products but doesnât come up with a list of the product names, so I canât select the two particular scenes that I need for this tutorial, and I donât know what the scene images look like, and donât have access to the other text label data found in the standard scihub interactive interface. I canât figure out what to do with the blue bars at the bottom of the screen or what they mean. I can change the size of the bars with timeline or months setting, so I assume they mean the frequency of the selected scenes, but if I click on them nothing happens, so I canât very well select the June 6th or September 10th image I am seeking.
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Thank you for your feedback - thereâs definitely a lot of scope for improvement.
Navigation with mousepad is extremely hard due to a lack of movement controls, you can just select with left click. Right click is for movement but not mousepad-friendly. I would quite like to see a button i can hit to switch between selection and movemet modes
Not being able to see all products by date without defining area is also a disadvantage.
Havent had any problems downloading yet, although the api query fails most of the time.
User interface can be worked on to be friendlier and generally easier to use, it is quite hard to use at the moment
I am assuming you are replying to me - The feedback i gave was about âdownloading Sentinel data via the Product Library in SNAPâ hence the title of the thread. Most of the features i expressed the lack of are already existent in Copernicus SciHub
If not - Please ignore
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I am sorry! You are completely right. I had too many tabs open and confused this with another topic. Your response was totally legit and I removed my post, because it made no sense.
I should probably respond more carefully.
I like using it to search my local data - it work great for SAR but not as well for optical.
I donât use it for downloading - itâs quicker to search and get data from Vertex
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btw I like the timeline - it makes it easy to see where there are gaps but I agree that being able to drag the mouse to select a time range would be useful
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I am aware of this functionality but I have never used it as if I am only downloading a single/couple of images I will use the the Copernicus sci hub data portal (easy and you can check for downtime before you go any further). Most of the time it is bulk downloads I require for which I use the Sentinelsat python package as its quick and easy to use as I prefer to work in python (snappy) when there are not performance penalties for doing so to work with the products.
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I would like to use the Product Library but have been unable to because of reasons including the ones others have mentioned above.
- Itâs hard to specify a region of interest.
- Itâs hard to specify search parameters.
- Search results are extremely slow to come back, and itâs unclear why.
- Itâs easy to accidentally lose search results.
- Quicklook thumbnails are awkward to scroll through.
The Sentinel Hub EO-Browser interface is pretty ideal in my opinion, but it doesnât seem to give access to full (.SAFE) downloads.
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I have used it a couple of times but as others have stated the thumb nail where I select the area of interest is small. I was able to slide the border up and make it a little bigger but I like Open Access Hub and I am familiar with the filters there sensing start, end, check Sentinel 2 draw a window around my area of interest and hit search.
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Just used for first time.
Love the concept, makes logical sense to integrate this aspect. Sure some improvements to be made: Initial comments from me:
1: As others, AoI interface clunky and too small. Scihubâs good but I never know whether Iâm scrolling the map or drawing my AoI - these particular controls are confusing.
2: No tool tips on the little icons in the AoI window.
3: Non-intuitive zoom-scrolling of the AoI map (at least on a mac), where you should âpullâ the map in, i.e. scroll backwards, instead you stroke forward to zoom in, and this is not normal mac practice.
4: Need an AoI map with place names (at least option).
5: Much slower than scihub in retrieving search-result metadata. Not too bad if teh search constraints limit the return to only a very few scenes.
6: When I select an image to download, it doesnât transfer the file name to the âsave asâ dialog, and then after inserting a suitable name, I get an error, something about âcanât import a null valueâ(?), then SNAP crashes and I have to force-quit.
This is all trying to download S1 IW GRD.
Hope is of some help
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