Extract text from Envisat satellite data files (N1)
To convert N1 data files to another format, you need SNAP or other GIS software.
To convert other file formats to the "Satellite Telemetry File" file type, you need software like SNAP or a similar tool.
The .N1 file format is a legacy satellite data container created by the European Space Agency (ESA). It stores Earth Observation telemetry, such as ocean color and atmospheric profiles, captured by the Envisat satellite between 2002 and 2012. These datasets are typically processed using heavy scientific toolboxes like SNAP (Sentinel Application Platform), the legacy BEAM software, or via Python scripts using the GDAL library.
Because the Envisat mission ended in 2012, the format is officially obsolete. It is a highly specialized, hierarchical format that standard web browsers and basic image viewers cannot open. Furthermore, .N1 files are uncompressed and massive - often exceeding 1GB per file. General-purpose GIS software like ArcGIS often struggles to read the underlying Level-2 data products without complex plugins.
For most practical applications, conversion is mandatory. GIS professionals typically convert .N1 to TIFF (GeoTIFF) to preserve geolocation grids and raster bands for use in QGIS. Researchers often export data to NC (NetCDF) or HDF5 for numerical analysis. For general sharing, exporting to JPG or PNG allows for quick visual inspection, though all scientific metadata is lost in this conversion.
The format is difficult to process because it embeds specialized tie-point grids, metadata headers, and processing flags alongside multi-band raster data. Standard online converters fail to process it because it is a closed, proprietary scientific format. Often, only ESA’s original software can accurately decode all the internal layers. Drag and drop your file into convert.guru to identify the exact format, view the internal text data, and convert it if a supported underlying format is detected.
Convert.Guru analyzes your N1 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted WATCH, MP4 and GNM files.
If you want to convert N1 file to TMP, TEMP, CACHE, LOG, BAK, OLD, NEW, PART, DOWNLOAD, CRDOWNLOAD, LOCK or PID, you can use SNAP or similar software from the "Earth Observation Data Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DEVICE, CACHE, SOCK, SYMLINK, PID, MOUNT, FIFO, LOG, PIPE, TMP, JUNCTION or TEMP files to N1, try SNAP or another comparable tool in the "Earth Observation Data Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our N1 converter.