Converting without saving

[tomthepom]

Hi All

I have a library of mixed formats, epub, mobi and others, which I manage with Calibre for various reading devices.
Now when I send, say, an epub book to my kindle, Calibre will auto convert this to mobi format before sending it. All well and good. But now I have two copies of the book in the database; the original epub and the converted mobi. How do I prevent Calibre from saving newly converted files to the database?
I would rather have just the one original file in the database and autoconvert it every time I use it.

Cheers

Tom

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tomthepom

Hi All

I have a library of mixed formats, epub, mobi and others, which I manage with Calibre for various reading devices.
Now when I send, say, an epub book to my kindle, Calibre will auto convert this to mobi format before sending it. All well and good. But now I have two copies of the book in the database; the original epub and the converted mobi. How do I prevent Calibre from saving newly converted files to the database?
I would rather have just the one original file in the database and autoconvert it every time I use it.

Cheers

Tom

Are disk drives that expensive where you live?
Are you willing to wait hours while the really odd/difficult convert ?



You might want to revisit your thinking.

If Calibre needed to Auto-convert... You have a need (and device) for that format. Why burn power (conversion is CPU intensive) over and over for the same book.

[tomthepom]

Thanks for the slightly snarky reply, but I really have thought this through;

- When building up the library I took a lot of pains to pick out the best version of each book, regardless of file format. I don't want to lose track of those original files.

- As I understand it, Calibre will convert with parameters based on the device you set - so the first time I create a mobi file for the Kindle, Calibre will downscale pictures etc. to fit the Kindle. If I later send the book to a higher resolution mobi device, say my netbook, unless I remember to do another conversion I'll get the old file that Calibre created for the Kindle, together with it's downscaled pictures. Keeping tabs on what version is for what is unreasonable - much simpler to just keep the highest quality original, in whatever format, and convert each time for each specific device.

- Say Kovid improves the mobi to epub conversion algorithms. If I wanted to take advantage of this, it would be a non-trivial task to pick out the epubs in the library that were created by Calibre as opposed to epubs that are originals.

- Yes drives are cheap, but I also keep my library on other devices where space is much more limited.

Drives are cheap but so are processor cycles - I don't think it's unreasonable to want to keep my carefully selected library clean and just convert as and when I need to.

Cheers

Tom

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tomthepom

Thanks for the slightly snarky reply, but I really have thought this through;

- When building up the library I took a lot of pains to pick out the best version of each book, regardless of file format. I don't want to lose track of those original files.

- As I understand it, Calibre will convert with parameters based on the device you set - so the first time I create a mobi file for the Kindle, Calibre will downscale pictures etc. to fit the Kindle. If I later send the book to a higher resolution mobi device, say my netbook, unless I remember to do another conversion I'll get the old file that Calibre created for the Kindle, together with it's downscaled pictures. Keeping tabs on what version is for what is unreasonable - much simpler to just keep the highest quality original, in whatever format, and convert each time for each specific device.

- Say Kovid improves the mobi to epub conversion algorithms. If I wanted to take advantage of this, it would be a non-trivial task to pick out the epubs in the library that were created by Calibre as opposed to epubs that are originals.

- Yes drives are cheap, but I also keep my library on other devices where space is much more limited.

Drives are cheap but so are processor cycles - I don't think it's unreasonable to want to keep my carefully selected library clean and just convert as and when I need to.

Cheers

Tom

Those are valid reason.
I added a custom column MSTR_FMT for some of the reasons you listed.
If i want to convert again, I want to use the least lossy (of the original) as my base.

Is a Mobi reader the best or Necessary to use on your Netbook? I would always shoot for EPUB as it provide lots of control/features that Mobi locks out. IMHO Calibre Book viewer doe nice, EPUB Reader for Firefox is also nice.

[tomthepom]

Originally Posted by theducks

Those are valid reason.
I added a custom column MSTR_FMT for some of the reasons you listed.
If i want to convert again, I want to use the least lossy (of the original) as my base.

Is a Mobi reader the best or Necessary to use on your Netbook? I would always shoot for EPUB as it provide lots of control/features that Mobi locks out. IMHO Calibre Book viewer doe nice, EPUB Reader for Firefox is also nice.

Thanks for the reply, I have thought along those lines too but it raises other issues. Do you manually update your MSTR_FMT column or do you have a way of automatically filling it in when you add new books? Is there a way of telling Calibre to choose a particular original file based on that column when converting?
I have family members of varying technical aptitude (and patience!) who use the library, so the more automated the process the better.

Would be much simpler if there was a way to ask Calibre not to save a local copy when it sends a book to a device.

Cheers

Tom

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tomthepom

Thanks for the reply, I have thought along those lines too but it raises other issues. Do you manually update your MSTR_FMT column or do you have a way of automatically filling it in when you add new books? Is there a way of telling Calibre to choose a particular original file based on that column when converting?
I have family members of varying technical aptitude (and patience!) who use the library, so the more automated the process the better.

Would be much simpler if there was a way to ask Calibre not to save a local copy when it sends a book to a device.

Cheers

Tom

MSTR_FMT is manual (and what is there is subject to change if I get a better master)

How about making a Batch file attached to Open With Menu that passes the book name to the CLI and directs the output to an attached drive (your device)
the only problem I see is that Open With expects a specified, Single format to operate upon

[tomthepom]

Originally Posted by theducks

MSTR_FMT is manual (and what is there is subject to change if I get a better master)

How about making a Batch file attached to Open With Menu that passes the book name to the CLI and directs the output to an attached drive (your device)
the only problem I see is that Open With expects a specified, Single format to operate upon

Again rather fiddly. The only real solution I've found is the 'nuclear' option, have 2 copies of the library, a clean 'archive' and a 'live'. I can use the archive copy for adding books, editing metatdata etc. and the live copy for genral use. A periodical one-way sync from the archive to live will remove unwanted non-original copies of books. As a bonus it will also restore metadata corrupted and books accidentally deleted by careless fingers (another niggle with Calibre, there doesn't seem to be a way to 'lock' entries or make them read only).
Of course I'll also lose things like the last 'read position in book' metadata, but you can't have everything!