Import Author And Title From Filename & Import Other Tags And Cover From File

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by DazJWood

We all like to do things different!

You're spot on with that statement.

Originally Posted by DazJWood

I would prefer to have all tags correct of course but the author and title are the priority. I would like them formatted to how I like them; which is not necessarily how they are embedded in the mobi files. Equally I don't want to lose some of the information / tags that are already on the file.

Unless I put the tags in the file myself I never want to use the tags that are in a file, instead I use the GoodReads Metadata download plugin to retrieve my as outlined in this post.

Also I never allow the metadata download process to alter the Author, Title or Series of a book, because I already put them the way I want them.

Good Reading.

[BetterRed]

Non commercial 'technical' publications often have useful tags and comments in their metadata, but incorrect title & author, and the original filename is often just a reference number. I'm thinking of public domain documents from academia, governments, think tanks, supra-nationals such as UN, IMF, EU etc. There are no 3rd party metadata sources for these publications.

For many people the 'title & author(s)' are the primary identification for their documents - so existing collections will often have file-names with accurate title and author, whilst the embedded metadata will remain untouched because without Calibre there's no convenient way to even view it - let alone get it right.

When I was initially loading Calibre with my existing collection of 'technical' publications I would have appreciated an option to take 'title & author(s)' from the file-name and the cover & other metadata from whatever was embedded in the document. I ended up adding books to a "New Books" library, taking all the metadata from the document, and then correcting the 'title & author(s)' before moving the books to the "Main" library. I still do this with all books - even real ebooks from Amazon, B&N etc.

Originally Posted by DazJWood

Incidentally, when I try to capitalize every word in the title (using Title Case), why does it not capitalize words like of, a, the, etc...?

"Title Case" like most things English, has no single authoritative definition see ===>>> http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarf...italstitle.htm

What you're asking for is more often called "Capital Case". What Calibre's Capitalize option does is more often referred to as "Sentence Case".

Other languages have different rules and conventions often maintained by government sponsored regulatory agencies - e.g. in French and German its probably defined by the Académie française and Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung respectively

BR

[DazJWood]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

For many people the 'title & author(s)' are the primary identification for their documents - so existing collections will often have file-names with accurate title and author, whilst the embedded metadata will remain untouched because without Calibre there's no convenient way to even view it - let alone get it right.

When I was initially loading Calibre with my existing collection of 'technical' publications I would have appreciated an option to take 'title & author(s)' from the file-name and the cover & other metadata from whatever was embedded in the document. I ended up adding books to a "New Books" library, taking all the metadata from the document, and then correcting the 'title & author(s)' before moving the books to the "Main" library. I still do this with all books - even real ebooks from Amazon, B&N etc.

Yay I'm not the only one that misses this functionality!
It is frustrating that I have the information in the file names but no way of importing them unless I forgo the rest of the metadata from the file.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

"Title Case" like most things English, has no single authoritative definition see ===>>> http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarf...italstitle.htm

What you're asking for is more often called "Capital Case". What Calibre's Capitalize option does is more often referred to as "Sentence Case".

Capital Case would be a good additional option then. I name all my files and titles using capitals for the first letter of each word.

The problem is everyone wants something different!

Daz

[BetterRed]

Daz - I did suggest a possible way to do it

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Maybe one way to do it would be to extract the opf from from the MOBI with the MobiUnpack plugin and then use the from-opf option of the ebook-meta command to update the Calibre metadata with what's in the opf file - see http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cli/ebook-meta.html. I think the MobiUnpack plug-in is a wrapper around a command line program, if you used the latter should make it simpler to write a script

Did you try it

If it works on a single book then it should be possible to write a script to execute the mobiunpack and ebook-meta commands on each book in your library to extract the metadata out of the mobi files and write it into the calibre database. As I read the from-opf option you should be able to select the metadata items you want - ie you wouldn't select the author and title.

Sorry, I can't help with the scripting - that bit of my brain died years ago.

Cheers BR

[mdb5972]

Possible suggestion:

1. Create a Custom Column text field {disk_filename}
2. Add the books via the CLI calibredb add
3. Use the calibredb add -f #{disk_filename}:{filename}
-- one at a time so will be slower
4. Use RegEx in the multiple edit to parse the custom {disk_namefield} to the Author, Title fields -- saving them for quick use next time.

This would let you leave it on 'Read metadata from file' but allow you to quickly parse the custom field to adjust the title and author.

I use custom tags like '_ADDED' (from Preferences:'Add Books' and Tweaks:'Control how tags are applied...'=True) on add books to quickly search for a subset of records that I need to process after adding new books/records. Or for command line changes to existing records set an custom yes/no updated (#ie #upd) flag to find the changed subset.


Windows: update example

FOR /F "SKIP=1 TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=," %a in (UNPROCESSED.CSV) DO @ECHO. && @ECHO BOOK ID: %~a && ECHO ISBN : %~b && ECHO. && @IF EXIST E:\xRESULTS\%~b.opf (calibredb set_metadata --dont-notify-gui --with-library="E:\CALIBRE\WORK" -f #upd:yes %~a e:\xRESULTS\%~b.opf)


%~b cuz my export adds double-quotes around the fields; %~ strips them

[nikoski]

Any fresh ideas on this issue about getting title and author from the file name and the rest of metadata (untouched) from the already existing file info?

This is exactly what i'm missing when trying to import a bunch of Epubs to calibre.

[KiSmo]

Originally Posted by nikoski

Any fresh ideas on this issue about getting title and author from the file name and the rest of metadata (untouched) from the already existing file info?

This is exactly what i'm missing when trying to import a bunch of Epubs to calibre.

I had reverse situation.
Books were organized in folders by series name and series index.
e.g.: "The Erevis Cale Trilogy 02 - Dawn of Night.prc"
I could add books to calibre using "read metadata" but then I would lose all information about series (there were about 240 books in 70 series)
So, i imported books in new calibre library using rexex: (?P<series>[^_0-9-]*)(?P<series_index>[0-9]*)\s*-\s*(?P<title>[^_].+) ?
Afterwards i converted all book to epub and deleted all prc formats.
This left me with correct series indexes but without author. All books had correct metadata but wrong database entry.
I could go and click "Set metadata from the selected format" but I would have to do it 240 times.

I deleted entire library from calibre.

That left files on disk with correct metadata stored in epub.

Then I imported books using "read metadata from file".

btw: bulk copy of metadata information to database would be very fine option.

[Inferno]

Question for original poster. What is in the metadata that is important if the author and title are not correct?

[pannndora]

Originally Posted by DazJWood

I have a folder full of over 1,400 ebooks that I want to manage in Calibre.

The filenames are set up as:

<title> - <author>.mobi

I want to use the filename for the title and author metatags as these are all accurate and the tags currently on each file are either not correct or not formatted as I want them.

The other tags I would like to keep the same as are currently on the file (cover, published date, comments, etc...).

I cannot find a way to import all the books using the filename for the title and author and leaving the remaining tags as they are already on the file.

I'm sure this should be easy to do but I am either being really thick (which is highly probable) or I'm missing a setting somewhere.

Thanks in advance,

Daz

I had to register on mobileread just to give you my full support. ))
I have thousands of books and they are sorted alphabetically by authors.
In every authors folder there are subfolders with authors name-book title.

When I import them they became a mess of incorrect metadata.

I tried the option to import them ignoring metadata but then I'm missing covers.
And I would like to have the original cover and not some randomly downloaded.

There should be an option to get at least the cover separately from other metadata.

I saw Kovid's replay that wrong author and title metadata automatically assume other metadata is incorect too-but it's not the case with covers.

Covers should somehow be fixed to the book without the rest of the metadata.

Sorry to see it's not the case. (((

[McStubb]

Originally Posted by pannndora

I had to register on mobileread just to give you my full support. ))
I have thousands of books and they are sorted alphabetically by authors.
In every authors folder there are subfolders with authors name-book title.

When I import them they became a mess of incorrect metadata.

I tried the option to import them ignoring metadata but then I'm missing covers.
And I would like to have the original cover and not some randomly downloaded.

There should be an option to get at least the cover separately from other metadata.

I saw Kovid's replay that wrong author and title metadata automatically assume other metadata is incorect too-but it's not the case with covers.

Covers should somehow be fixed to the book without the rest of the metadata.

Sorry to see it's not the case. (((

So when you import the books you can configure the file name template, which should get you the needed data. Then in the book metadata editor you can set the cover from the ebook which should get you the best of both worlds.

The line: I could go and click "Set metadata from the selected format" but I would have to do it 240 times.
is incorrect, you can do that in the bulk editor. Worst case create two new columns, with org_title and org_author and then mass replace title => org_title, then run the restore metadata command, then reverse the mass replace org_title => title.

I use the org_author and org_title myself when I am pulling metadata from the internet because I sometimes accidentally select the wrong match in bulk downloads.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by pannndora

I tried the option to import them ignoring metadata but then I'm missing covers.

This is a good first step now all your books are in the library with the proper title and author.

Originally Posted by pannndora

And I would like to have the original cover and not some randomly downloaded.

There should be an option to get at least the cover separately from other metadata.

There is the option to get book covers from the book files metadata. Select all of the books you wish to retrieve the covers from the book files.

Click the Edit metadata button.
Check the "Set from e-books option"
Click OK

Calibre will get any cover it finds designated in the file and set it as the cover for the book in the library.