Downloading Metadata question v.08

zed88 · 05-14-2011, 01:45 PM

I'm loving 0.8 (I just updated to 08.1) especially the cover choice option, but I'm seeing some behavior that I'm curious about.
When I go to download metadata for a title, I find that now I usually only get one option, where in <0.8, I got multiple options to choose from and pick the right edition of my book.
I checked in the 'view log' and can see that other editions of the book were found, but they aren't presented to me to choose from. There is no isbn (that I can see) associated with my original file, just a name and author. Some of these are text files that I have created from other formats.
I've tried toggling "read metadata from file contents rather than name" both on and off and the behavior remains the same.
I wouldn't care about this, but for some reason, some books keep coming back with the metadata for the audio version with no option for print.

Is it something in my settings, or something in my files? Are people still seeing a long list of book options when they go to edit metadata?

kiwidude · 05-14-2011, 02:14 PM

That's just the way it works now.

Calibre merges together books that are all in the same "ISBN pool" from across your sources picking what it considers the "best" choice for title, author, series etc from all of those records. So if you search Amazon and Goodreads then if their ISBNs are the same or recognised as belonging together according to the XISBN website then you will only see one combined result displayed.

You will see multiple books appearing if the search results return books that have ISBNs that are not in the same pool. Say for instance you searched for a book with "Dragon" as the title (without an ISBN already known), and the author had multiple books with "Dragon" in their title. Then they will come back as your multiple results to choose which "book" you were after.

So that is very different to presenting a result per source like I think you got prior to 0.8 (I never used it). The only real downside is that it means you cannot pick and choose on the fly from book descriptions from different sources or some other attribute you prefer from one (not without doing the search over again and disabling populating certain fields from certain plugins). Instead you just have to trust that the merge logic is grabbing a result that you will like.

It woud be a very complex slippery slope if Kovid was to try and support that though, for instance what if Amazon had a description but no series, but Goodreads had a series name. Letting Calibre merge the two gives you it's opinion of the best of both. You can always manually overwrite it if you want to using the book id hyperlinks to quickly navigate to the various site specific editions.

zed88 · 05-14-2011, 03:05 PM

Is there any way to weight the results so that books are favored over recordings?
For one of the titles I looked up, ISBNDB returned a valid paperback version, Google returned none, and Amazon returned three - the first was a different paperback and the next two were audio recordings. The selection I was presented with was one of the audio books.
If it's not too complicated to do it would save me from a lot of manual 'fixing'.
Thanks so much for your quick response.

speakingtohe · 05-17-2011, 08:50 PM

Possibly you could weight it by choosing where to download metadata from (enable/install plugins). Fantastic fiction does not do audio AFAIK. You can click on each entry and read the metadata before choosing.

zed88 · 05-17-2011, 09:25 PM

I came to the same conclusion.
I've added the Goodreads plugin and it seems to have solved the problem.
Yes!

kiwidude · 05-18-2011, 04:08 AM

I can't remember what the amaon plugin does in the code, but I know it had some logic in there, i thought to make audio versions a lower priority in the set of results.

Speaking for my own metadata sources which I do know for sure. The Goodreads plugin will try to ignore any of the audio variants, unless audio is the only version Goodreads returned in the search. Hopefully that situation is rare anyway, but I thought it might be better due to the inconsistent way Goodreads aggregates it's results.

The B&N plugin will completely ignore audio versions. It doesn't aggregate editions in the search results like the Goodreads website does, so you should be able to rely on getting a non audio format in the results.

WebScription and Fantastic Fiction do not have audio editions in the search results on the website.

Of course if you have given a book an isbn that refers to an audio version, then you will still get that audio version metadata back. The above only applies when the metadata source plugin is doing a title author search due to no isbn being present or the isbn not found on the website.

05-14-2011, 01:45 PM	#1
zed88 Member Posts: 23 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: iphone, ipad, nook	Downloading Metadata question v.08 I'm loving 0.8 (I just updated to 08.1) especially the cover choice option, but I'm seeing some behavior that I'm curious about. When I go to download metadata for a title, I find that now I usually only get one option, where in <0.8, I got multiple options to choose from and pick the right edition of my book. I checked in the 'view log' and can see that other editions of the book were found, but they aren't presented to me to choose from. There is no isbn (that I can see) associated with my original file, just a name and author. Some of these are text files that I have created from other formats. I've tried toggling "read metadata from file contents rather than name" both on and off and the behavior remains the same. I wouldn't care about this, but for some reason, some books keep coming back with the metadata for the audio version with no option for print. Is it something in my settings, or something in my files? Are people still seeing a long list of book options when they go to edit metadata?

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05-14-2011, 02:14 PM	#2
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,637 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	That's just the way it works now. Calibre merges together books that are all in the same "ISBN pool" from across your sources picking what it considers the "best" choice for title, author, series etc from all of those records. So if you search Amazon and Goodreads then if their ISBNs are the same or recognised as belonging together according to the XISBN website then you will only see one combined result displayed. You will see multiple books appearing if the search results return books that have ISBNs that are not in the same pool. Say for instance you searched for a book with "Dragon" as the title (without an ISBN already known), and the author had multiple books with "Dragon" in their title. Then they will come back as your multiple results to choose which "book" you were after. So that is very different to presenting a result per source like I think you got prior to 0.8 (I never used it). The only real downside is that it means you cannot pick and choose on the fly from book descriptions from different sources or some other attribute you prefer from one (not without doing the search over again and disabling populating certain fields from certain plugins). Instead you just have to trust that the merge logic is grabbing a result that you will like. It woud be a very complex slippery slope if Kovid was to try and support that though, for instance what if Amazon had a description but no series, but Goodreads had a series name. Letting Calibre merge the two gives you it's opinion of the best of both. You can always manually overwrite it if you want to using the book id hyperlinks to quickly navigate to the various site specific editions.

05-14-2011, 03:05 PM	#3
zed88 Member Posts: 23 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: iphone, ipad, nook	Is there any way to weight the results so that books are favored over recordings? For one of the titles I looked up, ISBNDB returned a valid paperback version, Google returned none, and Amazon returned three - the first was a different paperback and the next two were audio recordings. The selection I was presented with was one of the audio books. If it's not too complicated to do it would save me from a lot of manual 'fixing'. Thanks so much for your quick response.

05-17-2011, 08:50 PM	#4
speakingtohe Wizard Posts: 4,812 Karma: 26912940 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: sony PRS-T1 and T3, Kobo Mini and Aura HD, Tablet	Possibly you could weight it by choosing where to download metadata from (enable/install plugins). Fantastic fiction does not do audio AFAIK. You can click on each entry and read the metadata before choosing.

05-17-2011, 09:25 PM	#5
zed88 Member Posts: 23 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: iphone, ipad, nook	I came to the same conclusion. I've added the Goodreads plugin and it seems to have solved the problem. Yes!

05-18-2011, 04:08 AM	#6
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,637 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	I can't remember what the amaon plugin does in the code, but I know it had some logic in there, i thought to make audio versions a lower priority in the set of results. Speaking for my own metadata sources which I do know for sure. The Goodreads plugin will try to ignore any of the audio variants, unless audio is the only version Goodreads returned in the search. Hopefully that situation is rare anyway, but I thought it might be better due to the inconsistent way Goodreads aggregates it's results. The B&N plugin will completely ignore audio versions. It doesn't aggregate editions in the search results like the Goodreads website does, so you should be able to rely on getting a non audio format in the results. WebScription and Fantastic Fiction do not have audio editions in the search results on the website. Of course if you have given a book an isbn that refers to an audio version, then you will still get that audio version metadata back. The above only applies when the metadata source plugin is doing a title author search due to no isbn being present or the isbn not found on the website.

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