Conversion of comics (CBR/CBZ)

[jaypeecee]

Hi all - wanted to add my two cents.

Originally Posted by tarugo

Hi there,

I'm new in kindle/conversion world.. so... please !

And english is not my natural language, please try to be patience!

Well, i'm trying to convert a .cbz manga (one piece, in fact) for my Kindle 2 (6") .. the conversion goas Ok, but i had a problem with the size of the pages...

Is to small, and i dont know why?! i try a fill things to change this.. but any success... the strange thing is... the COVER page is really OK! The size and everything.. but the rest is too small, i cant barely read...

Some pics to show what i try to explain:

http://twitpic.com/zsq97 (The Cover one)

http://twitpic.com/zsqfk (Normal Page)

PS. It's a portuguese, by the way.

I've been exploring a similar issue in this thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=889884

I believe the Calibre is not at fault here - it's a combination of the K2's image size limits and and the MOBI format. I see similarly small-sized page panels when I convert a CBZ to a MOBI using Calibre, with the full size covers as well.

BUT, as the K2's allowed display size for MOBI images seems to be 520px x 622px (see here),it seems that the K2 is just scaling the images to that size to display them. If you use the K2's joystick to select the image and zoom it, it will display full-screen, and looks great.

I suspect that Calibre is doing everything it should, and that the K2's software is responsible for the less-than-fullscreen images.

To try and remedy this, I've been exploring how to get CBZs to look as good as the zoomed images in MOBI files as PDFs, since PDF images will display full screen. The problem is that they look awful compared to the images that can be packed into a MOBI using Calibre. The Kindle seems to be at fault here as well - Calibre or Acrobat can make PDFs that have high-quality images in them, but the Kindle 2 mangles them when it displays them (jaggy, full of artifacts), even though they look perfect on a computer or any other PDF-enabled device (I tested on a Nexus One).

Maybe the upcoming Kindle software version 2.5 will remedy these woes?

[morebooks]

What would be cool was something which could split each frame into a separate picture file.

[Tigerlee]

Hi all,

I bought an ipad and want to convert all my comics in color epub as opposed to black & white which I did previously for my onyx boox e-ink reader.

I found out that although i ticked do not convert to black and white in the preference of calibre for comcs input, the end result is still black & white if i convert the comics in bulk to epub.

However if I convert them one at a time the output is in color. This solves the problem but not when I have quite a number of color comics (>500).

Is there a better way out of ths?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Tigerlee

i ticked do not convert to black and white in the preference of calibre for comcs input, the end result is still black & white if i convert the comics in bulk to epub.

It sounds like a bug that ought to be reported in the bug tracker. A potential work-around would be to use the command line interface and convert one-by-one using a for loop or similar script.

[kovidgoyal]

I'm afraid the only way to do it is individually. calibre rememebers cindividual conversion prefs which override the defaults.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I'm afraid the only way to do it is individually. calibre remembers individual conversion prefs which override the defaults.

Aha, so it is remembering his previous conversion to black and white during the bulk conversion? Do you mind if I ask: Where is the previous conversion pref stored? Is it in metadata.db .. or elsewhere?

[kovidgoyal]

In the db

[kovidgoyal]

Note that 0.7 (too be released in a week or so) will have the ability to delete stored conversion settings in bulk.

[Tigerlee]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Aha, so it is remembering his previous conversion to black and white during the bulk conversion? Do you mind if I ask: Where is the previous conversion pref stored? Is it in metadata.db .. or elsewhere?

Hi Starson,

Yes, I thought it remembers the previous settings to black & white too, so I decided to reset it to 'no conversion to black & white' in the preference tag for all comics conversion. This works as I reported but only if I convert a single comic at one time. When doing so, the conversion panel shows the comics input icon above the epub output icon. When click on the comcs input icon it brings me to a window that shows correctly the setting for 'no conversion to B&W'.

However if I select multiple cbr/cbz books to convert in bulk (even just only 2), when I click on the conversion tag, the conversion window that appears now do not have the comics input icon, only the epub output icon. Therefore I assume it will just take on whatever I set in the preference earlier.

But NO, everything is converted to B&W.

Thanks for the advice, I will post this under the bug reporting.

[Tigerlee]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I'm afraid the only way to do it is individually. calibre rememebers cindividual conversion prefs which override the defaults.

Kovid,

Thanks for the advice and thank you very much for your great and excellent program. I have been recommending this to all my ebook reader friends. They love it.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by Starson17

It sounds like a bug that ought to be reported in the bug tracker. A potential work-around would be to use the command line interface and convert one-by-one using a for loop or similar script.

I think I reported this as ticket #4682, though with regard to different options

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Kirtai

I think I reported this as ticket #4682, though with regard to different options

Except I was wrong and it isn't a bug. It's a feature. I forgot he had converted the same books B&W, so on the bulk convert it used the previous conversion options. He'll have to do them singly, or wait until 0.7 version that will let him remove all the earlier conversion preferences.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Except I was wrong and it isn't a bug. It's a feature. I forgot he had converted the same books B&W, so on the bulk convert it used the previous conversion options. He'll have to do them singly, or wait until 0.7 version that will let him remove all the earlier conversion preferences.

I found it highly annoying regardless. In my case I was doing multiple conversions of one of each type of comic I have with different settings to see what the results were and then bulk converting each type with the best settings. Which of course weren't the ones I used most recently on that file

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Kirtai

I found it highly annoying regardless.

Yes, which I'm sure is why Kovid's adding a button to do a bulk delete of saved conversion preferences.

[acidburn517]

I've been converting my cbz/cbr files to epub using calibre (and it's awesome by the way!). I've been turning off the TOC creation though because it makes chapters per page. Is there a way to edit the TOC so that I can indicate where the chapters will be created? I have some multi-chapter graphic novels that I wish to do this for and write now i have a 128 page GN with 128 "chapters". The workaround I've been doing is just making a bookmark on my sony reader for when the chapters are really supposed to be but I'm interested in another way to do this. Thanks for the help!