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I’ve previously been successful in importing ecw into QGIS 2.0 but the same methods (for example How to add *.ecw files to QGIS 2.0 on Windows?) have failed with a fresh install of QGIS 2.2 with OSGeo4W on W7 64. Seems to be a GDAL version issue. The OSGeo4W shell tells me I have GDAL version 1.11 but this new installed QGIS is “compiled against GDAL/OGR" version 1.10 according to 'about'. I’ve successfully got the ecw format listed by ‘gdalinfo –formats’ but that’s version 1.11 which I assume QGIS 2.2 can’t see. I note that OSGeo4W64/bin has both gdal110.dll and gdal111.dll. How do I force QGIS to use gdal 1.11 and not 1.10 and so be able to read ecw rasters (which I assume is the problem)? Any ideas gratefully received.

Thanks for the response nmtoken. I find that I have a different folder structure from my fresh QGIS2.2 install from OSGeo4W which has no less than 50 gdal files (from “gdal_auth.bat” to “gdalwarp.exe”) in C:/OSGeoW64/bin and one file “gdal_ECW_JP2ECW.dll” which is in C:/OSGeoW64/bin/gdalplugins. No “gisinternals” folder exists for me. I have followed the instructions on the GDAL website and also other answers on gis.stackexchange by manually copying the various ERDAS_ecw_SDKfiles to the appropriate folders. This worked with QGIS2.0 but fails with QGIS2.2. I've put C:/OSGeo4W/bin as the path in the Gdal Tools executables dialog box but QGIS2.2 still fails to recognise ecw rasters. Has anyone successfully imported ecw rasters in QGIS2.2? If so, could they let me (and others) know how they did it!

Success! QGIS2.2 64bit now importing all my ecws perfectly. Andre Joost's advice to manually roll back the default Gdal1.11 to Gdal1.10 and reinstall using the OSGeo4W advanced options works. How many users would have worked this one out for themselves I wonder? Either OSGeo4W should default to Gdal1.10 on express install or QGIS should compile against Gdal1.11.

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  • what happens if you use the Raster > GdalTools settings options to point at the version of GDAL you want to use? – nmtoken Jun 16 '14 at 17:29
  • Thanks for getting back on this (reading your book!). Gdal Tools settings dialog: the "path to the GDAL executable" is blank as is the 'GDAL python modules' and "GDAL help path"; the "GDAL data path" and GDAL driver path" are both greyed out. I tried pasting "C:\OSGeo4W64\bin\gdal111.dll" into the first dialog box but that didn't work. – goatwillow Jun 16 '14 at 18:28
  • In my case I have 'Path to GDAL executables' as C:/apps/gisinternals/bin/gdal/apps and 'path to GDAL python modules' as C:/apps/gisinternals/bin/gdal/python – nmtoken Jun 17 '14 at 15:17
  • gisinternals is a completely different installation of GDAL. Unexpected things may happen if you mix both. – AndreJ Jun 18 '14 at 3:57
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If QGIS is compiled against GDAL 1.10, you can't do much about it. So you have to downgrade the ecw driver to 1.10 to make them work together.

See also these tickets:

The issue might be solved with QGIS 2.4, which is just around the corner.

In the setup.exe of OSGEO4W64, select Advanced install, later change the view from Category to full.

Look for the gdal-ecw package , and the version number in front of it. It might be 1.11.0. If you click on Keep, you can toggle to the 1.10.1 version. This should run with your QGIS version compiled against GDAL 1.10.

Other opportunity is to use the 32bit version of QGIS 2.2. It runs well on 64bit machines. The standalone version has the ecw driver by default, with the correct GDAL version 1.10.1.

By the way, I have not installed any ERDAS SDK package. This seems to be unnecessary for Windows. And no need to set any paths manually. The qgis.bat launched when clicking on the QGIS icon sets all required paths.

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