GDAL createCopy is really slow

Question

I have a C++ program running some OpenCV processing on 4096x4096 JPEG2000 images that have geographical metadata. I don't want to modify the original, the results of my image manipulations are stored in a new image file. Since my resulting image is missing the data, I have implemented a copy method in my program using CreateCopy() to copy the source image data into the new image. On a 216kB image it takes 97sec to copy!

I have tried GDALSetCacheMax(200) and it seems to be worse.

I can't understand why such a small piece of metadata takes longer than even my OpenCV image processing algorithms! Please help!

Here is a sample GDALINFO output for a correct image. If I don't use CreateCopy, then my new image is missing the coordinate system, and the corner coordinates are just the pixel dimensions.

Driver: JP2OpenJPEG/JPEG-2000 driver based on OpenJPEG library
Files: <filename>.jp2
Size is 4096, 4096
Coordinate System is:
GEOGCS["WGS 84",
    DATUM["WGS_1984",
        SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.257223563,
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030"]],
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326"]],
    PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
    UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
    AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"]]
Origin = (-97.025756835937500,32.398681640625000)
Pixel Size = (0.000001341104507,-0.000001341104507)
Image Structure Metadata:
  INTERLEAVE=PIXEL
Corner Coordinates:
Upper Left  ( -97.0257568,  32.3986816) ( 97d 1'32.72"W, 32d23'55.25"N)
Lower Left  ( -97.0257568,  32.3931885) ( 97d 1'32.72"W, 32d23'35.48"N)
Upper Right ( -97.0202637,  32.3986816) ( 97d 1'12.95"W, 32d23'55.25"N)
Lower Right ( -97.0202637,  32.3931885) ( 97d 1'12.95"W, 32d23'35.48"N)
Center      ( -97.0230103,  32.3959351) ( 97d 1'22.84"W, 32d23'45.37"N)
Band 1 Block=1024x1024 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Red
  Overviews: 2048x2048, 1024x1024, 512x512, 256x256
  Overviews: arbitrary
Band 2 Block=1024x1024 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Green
  Overviews: 2048x2048, 1024x1024, 512x512, 256x256
  Overviews: arbitrary
Band 3 Block=1024x1024 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Blue
  Overviews: 2048x2048, 1024x1024, 512x512, 256x256
  Overviews: arbitrary

GDAL code:

//GDAL Data
const char *pszFormat = "JPEG2000";
GDALDriver *poDriver;
GDALDataset *srcDataset;
GDALDataset *dstDataset;
GDALAllRegister();
poDriver = GetGDALDriverManager()->GetDriverByName(pszFormat);

//Get Source metadata
srcDataset = (GDALDataset *) GDALOpen(imagePath, GA_ReadOnly);

//Create new image data
imwrite(maskPath, dst);

//Write metadata to new image
dstDataset = poDriver->CreateCopy(maskPath, srcDataset, false, NULL, NULL, NULL);
if(dstDataset != NULL)
{
    GDALClose((GDALDatasetH)dstDataset);
}

Answer 1

This problem was solved by mimicking the behavior of gdalcopyproj.py; but it required updating to the "not yet stable" GDAL2.0 code set.

Answer 2

Late to the party, but:
why don't you just copy the unopened file, either using the tools provided by your operating system, e.g.

copy <path/to/myfile.jp2> <path/to/workingcopy.jp2>

or using the C++ filesystem library

std::filesystem::copy_file(<path/to/myfile.jp2>, <path/to/workingcopy.jp2>)

and then open and edit it with GDAL/OpenCV?

That copy operation will not actually open and decode the file, so it ought to be done in a few seconds at most.