Calibre Corruption with Kobo Touch

[jackastor]

Ok after much fighting with my Kobo Touch, I have noticed a strong indication that when ever calibre is being used to push books to the touch, The covers show only long enough to indicate that they are there. Once the KT is ejected and processes the books the covers show up as blanks..Now oddly enough if you do a factory reset and the KT does it thing all those books that were now showing blank covers are now showing the covers correctly. The issue seems to be with whatever calibre is doing when it talks to the KT. Now When I deny Calibre access to the KT by disableing the kobo drivers, and connecting the msd card direcetly the problem remains the same the books that are pushed to the touch are blank covers..Untill a factory reset takes place and then those books are reprocessed and the touch sees and shows the covers.
Now no matter what happens as long as calibre does not talk to the touch the covers go over and show up all the time clean, clear, no factory reset needs to happen.
It further occurs to me that calibre May actually be corrupting important files on the touch and creating some of the random errors that we seem to be seeing. This makes sense as the software is not exclusive to the touch.

So what I have actually observed is as soon as calibre comunicates with the KT its all down hill from there. It may take it a long time to read the info from the touch but it definatly is writing information to the file system of the touch and that takes seconds. Its when it is making this connection that the data is being corrupted.

Plus this "eReader Storage Error " I have been seeing... I have duplicated and only duplicated with the use of Calibre. I can not reproduce this error any other way. Tested it 5 times with calibre result was 100 percent storage error... Tested 5 times with out using Calibre and never had an issue.

So we seriously need to look at what is happening with the touch when it talks with calibre.



Jack

[HarleyB]

I have only just received my Touch. I spent the 2 plus weeks waiting for it to arrive obsessively reading MR to learn other's experiences. After reading the posts about issues with Calibre I was very careful when I loaded my books. I started one at a time and progressed up to 5 and then (feeling reckless!) 10 ebooks per transfer.
I allowed plenty of time for them to transfer waiting 20 to 30 seconds after the "job" was supposedly complete before disconnecting my Touch. I used the Calibre disconnect waited 20 to 30 seconds and then checked with Windows before actually removing the USB. Only once was I still connected when I checked with Window and that was when I didn't wait before checking.
Loading 250 books this way took quite a while but it made me be ruthless with most of the 150 freebies I have collected over the past year. They are still in my Calibre library but haven't made it onto my Touch.
Most but not all of my covers made it across - probably 10 or so from the 250 books. However most of those covers were missing on my original Kobo as well. I have never understood why this happens as I have attempted to redo the covers several times. Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by HarleyB

I have only just received my Touch. I spent the 2 plus weeks waiting for it to arrive obsessively reading MR to learn other's experiences. After reading the posts about issues with Calibre I was very careful when I loaded my books. I started one at a time and progressed up to 5 and then (feeling reckless!) 10 ebooks per transfer.
I allowed plenty of time for them to transfer waiting 20 to 30 seconds after the "job" was supposedly complete before disconnecting my Touch. I used the Calibre disconnect waited 20 to 30 seconds and then checked with Windows before actually removing the USB. Only once was I still connected when I checked with Window and that was when I didn't wait before checking.
Loading 250 books this way took quite a while but it made me be ruthless with most of the 150 freebies I have collected over the past year. They are still in my Calibre library but haven't made it onto my Touch.
Most but not all of my covers made it across - probably 10 or so from the 250 books. However most of those covers were missing on my original Kobo as well. I have never understood why this happens as I have attempted to redo the covers several times. Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't.

if your books are placed on an micro sd card then doing a factory reset will result in the books being reprocessed by your touch and your covers will be there. I have over 3000 ebooks.. and while not all have covers I did take the time to track most down. All my books that have covers have them show up. I have decided the best way to deal with it is to use calbire to process my books but not to let it ineteract with my touch untill they have sorted this issue out. As long as calibre does not communicate with my touch, or interact via the server or even disableing the connect to folder option ( yes this leaves information on the card) My covers show on all the books I drag and drop into the device.
Factory reset erases the main memory and restores it to out of the box new. You just rerun the set up skip calibre interaction and your good to go as soon as it process the books that were on the sd card. Voila your covers show up.
good luck

jack

[fbrII]

I experience both problems, books without covers and "ereader storage errors", but have not had problems with either lately.

Book covers - You need to do a conversion to make sure you your cover will transfer correctly. Just do a epub to epub conversion and your cover problem should go away. I like right and left margins so I always do a conversion changing the margings from 5 points to 20 points anyway.

"E-Reader Storage Errors" - Since I have taken the precaution of waiting a few seconds after each job is processed when downloading and then again after ejecting the device from calibre I have yet to experience another "e-reader storage error" message.

I have a couple of hundred books I manage through calibre and I would have a hard time getting along without it now. Although, I did have to go through an initial learning curve which I accomplished by reading posts on the calibre forum.

[Sher0808]

Why do you feel the need to use Calibre with the Kobo Touch? I am a newbie to this and am curious.

I downloaded the Kobo application software on my computer as well as Adobe Digital Edition and I find I have no problem downloading books using either applications.

Is there something special about Calibre that I am missing? Thanks in advance.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by fbrII

I experience both problems, books without covers and "ereader storage errors", but have not had problems with either lately.

Book covers - You need to do a conversion to make sure you your cover will transfer correctly. Just do a epub to epub conversion and your cover problem should go away. I like right and left margins so I always do a conversion changing the margings from 5 points to 20 points anyway.

"E-Reader Storage Errors" - Since I have taken the precaution of waiting a few seconds after each job is processed when downloading and then again after ejecting the device from calibre I have yet to experience another "e-reader storage error" message.

I have a couple of hundred books I manage through calibre and I would have a hard time getting along without it now. Although, I did have to go through an initial learning curve which I accomplished by reading posts on the calibre forum.

Nope not true, epubs have standards that means covers are formated a certain way. Some covers can be a little larger but eseentially they are the same. This is not true of mobi or lit where the format is different and yes you have to make sure of those settings you mention. What ever calibre does it screws things up on the touch. if the covers were not correct, they would not show up when you do a factory reset. You would still have blank covers. But the fact that once the touch is reset and that calbre has no contact with your touch tells me that something is wrong with calibre.

When you do a factory reset on the touch anything that was on the sd card remains. So if those books had no covers that were compatible with the touch then they would still be blanks. How ever they all show up, 100 percent there, and if i drag and drop a 10 books the covers show up consistantly. However once i allow calibre to communicate to the touch and use it to push the books to the device the covers stop showing up or like you u get a few covers but a lot of blanks. I can take those same 10 books and use calbire to push them over and those 10 books no longer have the covers. All my books are the same. I manage all my books meta data from calibre. All my covers show up correctly in other ebook software such as stanza or ibooks every time except when it comes to the touch. This logical progression shows us a trend that calibre is corrupting soemthing on the device. There is no other way to explain the issues here. And we all have the same thing in common "CALIBRE" . For whatever reason as soon as calibre starts to talk to the device it starts to corrupt things. Now Im curious about things and stubborn so yes I waste time to try dif things and one thing I know is if i use calbire all my books that I push over suddenly show up in the now reading, and have no covers... Which btw indicates that calbire is rewriting the data on the touch. But if I drag and drop my books they dont show up in the now reading list and my covers are always 100 percent there. IF calibre has communicated and dropped its files then no matter what how i push the books, The covers will not be there for the most part but on random occasions a cover will show. But if load say 100 books no covers show from calibre (remember the books are on the SD card not the main memory) and do a factory reset, which erases the main memory and restores it to factory, leaving the SD card alone. It will restore and prcoess the books on the sd card and all the covers show up perfectly. Now if I run calibre and allow it to communicate all my books that are pushed from calibre dont show covers, and on several occasions I have reproduced the Ereader storage error..

So now i tell calibre to save my books to a transfer file on my computer and I exit calibre making sure that the server is not running etc. Then I connect my touch and drop the books on to the storage card. Volia as soon as the touch processes the new books I search the author and add the title to my short list and verify the cover.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by Sher0808

Why do you feel the need to use Calibre with the Kobo Touch? I am a newbie to this and am curious.

I downloaded the Kobo application software on my computer as well as Adobe Digital Edition and I find I have no problem downloading books using either applications.

Is there something special about Calibre that I am missing? Thanks in advance.

There are a lot of dif formats of books out there. Calibre can manage those books for you and convert from a format say mobi or lit to epub. There are some epubs that people have scanned into the mix by hand. You can use calibre to download information about the book, set up series, authors, tags for searching. For example say you have a book on magic for beginers you could set up a tag to be magic, magic for beginers, my magic books etc. or in my case i usually set it up as the series name. Now say you want to know what the book is about, Calibre can grab that information as well and store it with the book, some ereaders can use that information and display it for you .
Now say the cover you have is ugly and the book you have seen at the book store has more apealing look well calibre can change that cover or even create a custom (albeit custom covers tend to be plain) cover.

Calibre has a great video that can show you how its done. Its well made and explains things and shows you as he explains it.

http://calibre-ebook.com/demo

Now say you have a book that has DRM well there are ways to remove that DRM so that you can use the book you own on all your Ereading platforms.


Also if you wanted to just manage your colleciton and say tranfer only a few books at a time you can do so. There is small learnign curve but Calibre is so well deisned that you will be able to handle it very quickly.

good luck

jack

[Billowz]

Hi,

I'm new to this forums and have little expertise with eReaders. However, I have noticed this exact same problem that Jack is having (covers disappearing).

Calibre definitely places files on the kobo eReader. Using Calibre to push books I have had similar problems and become quite frustrated.

There is something I noticed about this but not sure if it's relavant or not; When Calibre transfers books to the Kobo it automatically creates sub-folders according to author by default. I have found that if I remove the .epub files from the sub-folders and place them in the main directory of the kobo everything seems to work fine (the covers come back). Also so far I have yet to have a storage error on this particular reset although I am just waiting for it to happen.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by Billowz

Hi,

I'm new to this forums and have little expertise with eReaders. However, I have noticed this exact same problem that Jack is having (covers disappearing).

Calibre definitely places files on the kobo eReader. Using Calibre to push books I have had similar problems and become quite frustrated.

There is something I noticed about this but not sure if it's relavant or not; When Calibre transfers books to the Kobo it automatically creates sub-folders according to author by default. I have found that if I remove the .epub files from the sub-folders and place them in the main directory of the kobo everything seems to work fine (the covers come back). Also so far I have yet to have a storage error on this particular reset although I am just waiting for it to happen.

And if I do a factory reset. And leave the books as they are in the sub folders the covers will show as well once the touch process those books. But once calibre touches my touch well its all down hill. Fortunately I can still manage my books save them to disk and drop them into the unit.
All with out calibre touching the touch.

good luck

jack

[Atilla]

My solution was to disable the Kobo plugin in calibre for the time being.

I will just move the books around manually until there is a better kobo plugin which does not corrupt Kobo touch.

[PeterT]

Just wondering if any of you having issues with Calibre and the Tocuh have taken time to open a Calibre bug report and try to work with Tim on it?

[fbrII]

Nope not true, epubs have standards that means covers are formated a certain way. Some covers can be a little larger but eseentially they are the same. This is not true of mobi or lit where the format is different and yes you have to make sure of those settings you mention. What ever calibre does it screws things up on the touch. if the covers were not correct, they would not show up when you do a factory reset. You would still have blank covers. But the fact that once the touch is reset and that calbre has no contact with your touch tells me that something is wrong with calibre.

Not trying to be argumentative but I'm not sure why you feel my statement is not true. When I first started using calibre with a KT I had multiple instances where the book loaded without a cover image. I read posts in the calibre forum regarding this issue, where multiple people stated you need to do convert the book before you download it, in order to insure you get the cover image, along with the book.

If the book is already in an epub format thats ok, but you will still need to do an epub to epub conversion. I have downloaded at least a hundred books since and I have yet to have another book download without a cover.

Have you tried doing a conversion prior to downloading? You may have a separate issue but while I was one of those people questioning whether calibre was a problem earlier, I've made the adjustments I referred to earlier and I have not experienced any more problems and I use calibre on a daily basis.

[HarleyB]

fbrII thanks for the tip about epub to epub I'm off to see how that goes for my books missing covers.
What happens if it is a PDF with a missing cover? Do you do a PDF to PDF conversion? I've tried PDF to epub without much success due to the known limitations of converting PDF.
But does a PDF to PDF conversion add the cover without messing up anything else?

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by fbrII

Not trying to be argumentative but I'm not sure why you feel my statement is not true. When I first started using calibre with a KT I had multiple instances where the book loaded without a cover image. I read posts in the calibre forum regarding this issue, where multiple people stated you need to do convert the book before you download it, in order to insure you get the cover image, along with the book.

If the book is already in an epub format thats ok, but you will still need to do an epub to epub conversion. I have downloaded at least a hundred books since and I have yet to have another book download without a cover.

Have you tried doing a conversion prior to downloading? You may have a separate issue but while I was one of those people questioning whether calibre was a problem earlier, I've made the adjustments I referred to earlier and I have not experienced any more problems and I use calibre on a daily basis.

That is true for books that were never published as epub. All books that are published as epub have covers and adhere to the epub standard. Books that are scanned and turned into epubs will most likely not have a proper cover as they were never published as epub.

[jackastor]

FBR that would be true except for one thing. When you make the conversion no matter what you do it does not go over however if you paid attention to what I have been saying those same books are left on the sd card and were put there by calibre, and when the touch has been reset to factory and its processed the books voila the covers are there. The fact that the covers show up after the touch dumps all that calibre did to it tells me that the problem is calibre plain and simple. This means that the information is there in the epub for the ereader to read. How ever calibre does something to corrupt the information other wise if the covers were never there they would never show up regardless but they do when calibre is taken out of the equation as far as pushing your books to the ereader.

leaving calibre to handle things currently is leading to bigger bigger corruption issues that are not going to be resolved untill such time as a proper driver and handling routines are created. again the fact that the same books are left on the sd card where the covers are blanks and get processed by the touch after a factory reset and now the covers are there indicate that some type of corruption is going on other wise no covers woudl be no covers period.