Author/title problems loading books

dpayment · 01-18-2010, 09:18 AM

I'm really sorry if this is repeated somewhere else, but I've just spent the past couple of hours doing every search combination I can think of with no luck. Anyway, here's my problem:

I recently decided to collect all my ebooks into one top-level directory, then branch off into sub-levels (genre, author, etc.) Finished doing that after several days work, then renamed all books so they displayed in Title/Author/series format. (e.g. Foster, Alan Dean - Flinx - Flinx 01.) Once that was done, converted everything to a common format (probably doesn't matter which, but I selected html.) Deleted all the older files, keeping only the html, then tried importing everything into Calibre.

I'm using the lastest Calibre, I opened it using the command line (calibre --using-library g:\books) which opened up a new db, then clicked on Preferences and selected "get metadata from filename" option. Then I clicked "Add books" popdown arrow and selected "add multiple books from a single directory".

Got the worst mess of my life. Authors names and/or titles truncated, warnings of duplicate titles (none in the directory, checked that while doing the conversions) titles and authors reversed, series listing missing or changed to tags. In some cases, filenames had reverted to the previous name (the one the file had before I renamed everything correctly.)

Obviously I've got something wrong, but I can't figure out why Calibre is doing this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

itimpi · 01-18-2010, 11:14 AM

It sounds as if the regex you have set does not match the naming standard you adopted?

As a very simple example, the default that Calibre expects for Author is "Firstname Lastname" rather than "Lastname, Firstname". Not that this is catastrophic but it does tend to indicate the mismatch I mentioned.

There are several threads that discuss trying to work out the best regex for various naming patterns - perhaps one of these might be of use to you?

01-18-2010, 09:18 AM	#1
dpayment Connoisseur Posts: 90 Karma: 618 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Ottawa Device: PocketBook Pro 902, EB-1150, PRS505, PRS700, Jetbook, Hanlin V3, Kobo	Author/title problems loading books I'm really sorry if this is repeated somewhere else, but I've just spent the past couple of hours doing every search combination I can think of with no luck. Anyway, here's my problem: I recently decided to collect all my ebooks into one top-level directory, then branch off into sub-levels (genre, author, etc.) Finished doing that after several days work, then renamed all books so they displayed in Title/Author/series format. (e.g. Foster, Alan Dean - Flinx - Flinx 01.) Once that was done, converted everything to a common format (probably doesn't matter which, but I selected html.) Deleted all the older files, keeping only the html, then tried importing everything into Calibre. I'm using the lastest Calibre, I opened it using the command line (calibre --using-library g:\books) which opened up a new db, then clicked on Preferences and selected "get metadata from filename" option. Then I clicked "Add books" popdown arrow and selected "add multiple books from a single directory". Got the worst mess of my life. Authors names and/or titles truncated, warnings of duplicate titles (none in the directory, checked that while doing the conversions) titles and authors reversed, series listing missing or changed to tags. In some cases, filenames had reverted to the previous name (the one the file had before I renamed everything correctly.) Obviously I've got something wrong, but I can't figure out why Calibre is doing this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Dan

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01-18-2010, 11:14 AM	#2
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	It sounds as if the regex you have set does not match the naming standard you adopted? As a very simple example, the default that Calibre expects for Author is "Firstname Lastname" rather than "Lastname, Firstname". Not that this is catastrophic but it does tend to indicate the mismatch I mentioned. There are several threads that discuss trying to work out the best regex for various naming patterns - perhaps one of these might be of use to you?

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