Support Center Email Support Knowledge Base Videos

Seismic Viewer: Extract Wavelet

The Extract Wavelet dialog allows you to extract a seismic trace from the seismic display. This can be useful as input in the Seismic Zone Attributes application, or used as input for generating synthetics.  The wavelet can be saved as a SEG-Y file to be transferred into other software packages.

General Information


Trace Display

When you click on a trace in the seismic section, and the trace will be displayed on the right side of the dialog.  Based on the parameters set, the display will update with the changes specified.

Data Window

Set the amount of data that should be used to create the wavelet.

Upper Time:Specify an absolute start time to limit the wavelet.  The default is the start of the data.

Lower Time:Specify an absolute end time to limit the wavelet.  The default is the end of the data.

Number of Traces: Specify the total number of traces to stack to create the wavelet.  For example, if you set this value to three, it will stack the selected trace and one trace to the left and one trace to the right of the selected trace to produce the resulting wavelet.

Output Wavelet As

Specifies how to display and save the wavelet.

Raw trace data: Extra the wavelet as a raw wiggle trace.  This is most useful for input into seismic zone attributes.

Extracted wavelet: Convert the trace data into a wavelet.  This is the type of wavelet you will use as input when generating a synthetic.  The traces are stacked first before performing the wavelet extraction.

Power spectrum of data: Extract the power spectrum of the trace data into a wavelet.  This option is most frequently used as a quick way to dump the power spectrum to a csv file with the Save option.  Some users will use this option to generate information for the MMS NTL 2008-G05 Shallow Hazard Report  The traces are stacked first before calculating the power spectrum and the resulting trace is output from zero hertz to the Nyquist frequency.

Wavelet Parameters

Specify parameters that control the character of the extracted wavelet.  First specify the method to use for the calculation.

Auto-correlation: Create the wavelet by cross-correlating the original source wavelet with itself.

Amplitude spectrum: Create the wavelet by extracting the amplitude spectrum from the data and then converting it back to a wavelet using an inverse Fourier transform.

Smooth Spectrum:Smooth the amplitude spectrum data before performing the inverse Fourier transform.  This will produce a less ringy wavelet.  This parameter is only used when extracting the power spectrum of the trace data or using the amplitude spectrum method.

Window:Specify the window for the smoothing operator when smoothing the amplitude spectrum.  The window is specified in hertz.  This parameter is only used when extracting the power spectrum of the trace data or using the amplitude spectrum method.

Length: Specify the total length of the output wavelet.  The length is specified in milliseconds.  Because the wavelet is symmetrical the actual output wavelet will always have an odd number of samples.

Apply cosign taper:Apply a cosign taper to the resulting wavelet.  Use this to smooth out ringiness at the end of the wavelet.

Taper Length:Specify the length of the cosign taper as a percentage of the total wavelet.  The maximum value for this is fifty, which will apply the taper all the way to the center of the wavelet.

Extract Wavelet Operations

Save: Save the file as a SEG-Y file with a single trace.  The file is a standard SEG-Y file with IEEE floating point values as the sample values.  The file is NOT a SeisWare format SEG-Y file to aid in import into other packages.  By default the file is saved to a sub-directory in the project directory entitled Wavelets.  Optionally you can save the file to a comma separated value file for import into a spreadsheet package.

Close: Exit this dialog.

Also See

MORE INFORMATION