SEG Y

The SEG Y file format is one of several standards developed by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists for storing geophysical data. It is an open standard, and is controlled by the SEG Technical Standards Committee, a non-profit organization.

The format was originally developed in 1973 to store single-line seismic digital data on magnetic tapes. The specification was published in 1975, [Cite journal |last=Barry |first=K.M. |coauthors=Cavers, D.A.; Kneale, C.W. |year=1975 |title=Recommended standards for digital tape formats |journal=Geophysics |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=344–352 |url=http://www.seg.org/SEGportalWEBproject/prod/SEG-Publications/Pub-Technical-Standards/Documents/seg_y_rev0.pdf |doi=10.1190/1.1440530 ] and has since been named as the "rev 0" specification. However, since its release, there have been significant advancements in geophysical data acquisition, such as 3-dimensional seismic techniques and high speed, high capacity recording.

The most recent revision of the SEG Y format was published in 2002, named the "rev 1" specification. [Cite book |last=Norris |first=M.W. |coauthors=Faichney, A.K. (Eds.) |year=2002 |title=SEG Y rev1 Data Exchange format1 |publisher=Society of Exploration Geophysicists |location=Tulsa, OK |pages=45 pp. |url=http://www.seg.org/SEGportalWEBproject/prod/SEG-Publications/Pub-Technical-Standards/Documents/seg_y_rev1.pdf ] It still features certain legacies of the original format, such as an optional SEGY tape label, the main 3200 byte textual EBCDIC character encoded tape header and a 400 byte binary header.

This image shows the byte stream structure of a SEG Y file, with the Revision 1. added Extended Textual File Header records.

References