Generating Author and title from directory structure

Nerumshah · 11-25-2011, 02:27 AM

Good morning everyone, and thank you all for your hard work improving this wonderful Calibre!

I discovered Calibre a few days ago, after playing around with my brand new Kindle, wich, quite surprisingly I must say, really baffled me. I never thought i'd like reading on an electronic device, and you can easily imagine how thrilled I've been!!

Ok, so I got my Kindle, and gathered quite a few books from different sources... 13534 to be precise, many with doubles in different format. I manually got this number (It was before i found Calibre, of course!) down to 6935 unique e-books, 2/3 in LIT and the rest in rtf and pdf format, in the following structure:

Ebooks main folder / Author name folders (LN, FN) / [Book series] Book Name.extension

Which took me years and is quite clear, but not nearly as handy as using Calibre to manage them. Problem is, importing this massive collection left me with thousands of books wrongly tagged, because of poor book quality and i even if I have the courage to manually edit it, this probably will take me weeks of dedicated work....

So my question is, is there any way to get Calibre to understand that when it imports my books, it only has to put author name from the folder name, and original filename as book name? That would be a huge relief.

If not, any thought on how to smartly get the job done? I'll take any advice from knowledgeable people!

Thank you in advance for your help, I'll see you around on the forum from now on!

theducks · 11-25-2011, 09:49 AM

Calibre can't determine Metadata from the Full pathname of the file.
(NB. Calibre works on many O/S. Just think of all the variants in file systems it would have to get correct

)
On Windows, you might explore a Bulk renamer like Metamorphose and use that to flatten your folder structure ON A BACKEDUP

file source.

Nerumshah · 11-25-2011, 10:27 AM

Thanks for your answer... What would be the right procedure to do so then?

And by the way, is there any easier way to process that collection under Ubuntu?

theducks · 11-25-2011, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nerumshah

Thanks for your answer... What would be the right procedure to do so then?

And by the way, is there any easier way to process that collection under Ubuntu?

I have not done this on the Ubuntu side of the fence

pyRenamer (search in Synaptic) looks cool

Nerumshah · 11-25-2011, 11:06 AM

Ok, ill look into that!

I think that i will import my books, folder by folder, and bulk renaming the author part, then check and rename the titles if needed... Any thought on improving this method?

theducks · 11-25-2011, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nerumshah

Ok, ill look into that!

I think that i will import my books, folder by folder, and bulk renaming the author part, then check and rename the titles if needed... Any thought on improving this method?

Nope

try some, adjust your Add Books (preference) settings.

Note that if books already contain metadata,
Not using the ...from filename option, might be a better choice

Nerumshah · 11-25-2011, 12:03 PM

I can't thank you enough for your fast answers, thread "solved" !

Nerumshah · 11-25-2011, 02:04 PM

I happily discovered both metamorphose and the options on adding books in preferences, and i found one that would fit most of my library but:

For the filename:
Adams, Douglas - Hitchhiker 2 - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.lit

(?P<author>.+) - (?P<title>.+) gives: author=Adams, Douglas - Hitchhiker 2 and title=The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

How to correct my regular expression to get only the first part before the first " - " on any book to be considered as author, and the whole rest as title?

Nerumshah · 11-25-2011, 02:29 PM

Edit: found (?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>[^.]+)

Just lost my Python virginity!

11-25-2011, 02:27 AM	#1
Nerumshah Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Kindle Keyboard	Generating Author and title from directory structure Good morning everyone, and thank you all for your hard work improving this wonderful Calibre! I discovered Calibre a few days ago, after playing around with my brand new Kindle, wich, quite surprisingly I must say, really baffled me. I never thought i'd like reading on an electronic device, and you can easily imagine how thrilled I've been!! Ok, so I got my Kindle, and gathered quite a few books from different sources... 13534 to be precise, many with doubles in different format. I manually got this number (It was before i found Calibre, of course!) down to 6935 unique e-books, 2/3 in LIT and the rest in rtf and pdf format, in the following structure: Ebooks main folder / Author name folders (LN, FN) / [Book series] Book Name.extension Which took me years and is quite clear, but not nearly as handy as using Calibre to manage them. Problem is, importing this massive collection left me with thousands of books wrongly tagged, because of poor book quality and i even if I have the courage to manually edit it, this probably will take me weeks of dedicated work.... So my question is, is there any way to get Calibre to understand that when it imports my books, it only has to put author name from the folder name, and original filename as book name? That would be a huge relief. If not, any thought on how to smartly get the job done? I'll take any advice from knowledgeable people! Thank you in advance for your help, I'll see you around on the forum from now on!

11-25-2011, 02:04 PM	#8
Nerumshah Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Kindle Keyboard	I happily discovered both metamorphose and the options on adding books in preferences, and i found one that would fit most of my library but: For the filename: Adams, Douglas - Hitchhiker 2 - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.lit (?P<author>.+) - (?P<title>.+) gives: author=Adams, Douglas - Hitchhiker 2 and title=The Restaurant at the End of the Universe How to correct my regular expression to get only the first part before the first " - " on any book to be considered as author, and the whole rest as title? Last edited by Nerumshah; 11-25-2011 at 02:19 PM. Reason: unclear question

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11-25-2011, 09:49 AM	#2
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 29,803 Karma: 54830978 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Calibre can't determine Metadata from the Full pathname of the file. (NB. Calibre works on many O/S. Just think of all the variants in file systems it would have to get correct ) On Windows, you might explore a Bulk renamer like Metamorphose and use that to flatten your folder structure ON A BACKEDUP file source.

11-25-2011, 10:27 AM	#3
Nerumshah Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Kindle Keyboard	Thanks for your answer... What would be the right procedure to do so then? And by the way, is there any easier way to process that collection under Ubuntu?

11-25-2011, 11:06 AM	#5
Nerumshah Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Kindle Keyboard	Ok, ill look into that! I think that i will import my books, folder by folder, and bulk renaming the author part, then check and rename the titles if needed... Any thought on improving this method?

11-25-2011, 12:03 PM	#7
Nerumshah Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Kindle Keyboard	I can't thank you enough for your fast answers, thread "solved" !

11-25-2011, 02:29 PM	#9
Nerumshah Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Kindle Keyboard	Edit: found (?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>[^.]+) Just lost my Python virginity!