Originally posted by BenDover
and what is an smc file?
The strong-motion time series data served out by the U.S. Geological Survey National Strong-Motion Program are in one of two formats, SMC or BBF. This documentation describes the SMC-format and compares it to the BBF-format headers.
The SMC format uses ASCII character codes and provides text headers, integer headers, real headers, and comments followed by either digitized time-series coordinates or, in version 2 of the SMC format only, sets of response spectra values. The header information is designed to provide the user with information about the earthquake and the recording instrument. Each SMC-format file contains either a single time series or a set of response spectra or Fourier amplitude spectra of corrected acceleration calculated from a single time series. Typical analog strong-motion records contain traces corresponding to three orthogonal components of motion and consequently require three separate SMC-format files to represent the record.
You will need BAP software to read them check here for more information
http://nsmp.wr.usgs.gov/processing.html
