is there any way to time out a conversion?

[DarkRose]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Some books take a long time to convert. The odds are any book that takes longer than 20 minutes started its life in MS Word (like your lit file) and has 10s of thousands of lines of css / @font face stuff that it is sorting out.

Either let your machine run the 1 to 24 hours needed to complete the conversion (my longest was 6 hours) or set the book aside and look for a new source for that book.

The thing is though, I had already converted this book once and lost the converted file when I had to reinstall windows and it didn't take an unusually long time when I did it that time, so I don't see why it would take so long this time.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DarkRose

The thing is though, I had already converted this book once and lost the converted file when I had to reinstall windows and it didn't take an unusually long time when I did it that time, so I don't see why it would take so long this time.

Calibre is evolving
Did you use .8 on the first convert or .7 or .6?

Did Calibre do a better job this time around?

[DarkRose]

Originally Posted by theducks

Calibre is evolving
Did you use .8 on the first convert or .7 or .6?

Did Calibre do a better job this time around?

Are you assuming calibre actually ended up completing the conversion? Because it didn't. I still haven't been able to get this book to convert. I've used an older version of calibre and the most recent version and its decided not to work on either one. If this is what you mean by evolution I think calibre may be evolving in the wrong direction.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by DarkRose

Are you assuming calibre actually ended up completing the conversion? Because it didn't. I still haven't been able to get this book to convert. I've used an older version of calibre and the most recent version and its decided not to work on either one. If this is what you mean by evolution I think calibre may be evolving in the wrong direction.

If you stop a conversion before it finishes it's never going to complete . Conversion typically take a few seconds to a minute or two but it is possible for them to take weeks. In that case you are better of getting the file in a different format. Anything that started as a Word Doc (not properly cleaned because Word adds thousands of unnecessary CSS and tags that all have to be parsed and accounted for) or PDFs are the biggest source of long conversion times.

[DarkRose]

Originally Posted by user_none

If you stop a conversion before it finishes it's never going to complete . Conversion typically take a few seconds to a minute or two but it is possible for them to take weeks. In that case you are better of getting the file in a different format. Anything that started as a Word Doc (not properly cleaned because Word adds thousands of unnecessary CSS and tags that all have to be parsed and accounted for) or PDFs are the biggest source of long conversion times.

So basically if this is the only format I can find this book in I'm screwed? awesome.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by DarkRose

So basically if this is the only format I can find this book in I'm screwed? awesome.

Still one step up from not having an ebook form of the book at all. You could be cutting up a book, scanning the individual pages and trying to correct the numerous OCR errors right now .

[DarkRose]

I'd rather be doing that if it meant I might actually get to finish this book and I actually had the capability to do all that myself.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by DarkRose

I'd rather be doing that if it meant I might actually get to finish this book and I actually had the capability to do all that myself.

If it didn't error then just let the conversion finish. How long have you let it go for?

[DarkRose]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If it didn't error then just let the conversion finish. How long have you let it go for?

The most I let it go for was about an hour. My computer ( a laptop) was not happy about that so I've not been inclined to let it go so long again.
the last couple times I've tried it I've watched the progress on it and it gets to 47% converted after only a minute or two and then tends to just stop and sit there not really seeming to do anything.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by DarkRose

the last couple times I've tried it I've watched the progress on it and it gets to 47% converted after only a minute or two and then tends to just stop and sit there not really seeming to do anything.

There are certain percentages it seems to stop on, 47% being one of them. If you open up the jobs window and look at the details you will see it is still chugging along fine. This is normal, let it complete and your book will be converted.

[DarkRose]

So if I can't just let it sit for hours on end its probably not going to work...even though this same file converted just fine in the past, without it taking hours even.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by DarkRose

So if I can't just let it sit for hours on end its probably not going to work...even though this same file converted just fine in the past, without it taking hours even.

At this point we have no clue how long it will take. It will take as long as it takes and it will probably take as long as it actually took the first time.

Grab the job details after 5 minutes and paste it here so we can see if this is a new development.

[DarkRose]

This is right around the five minute mark. Nothing has changed since a bit over two minutes when it jumped up to 47%

Convert book 1 of 1 (A Feast for Crows)
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 0.8.12
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0.0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': u'original',
'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., 'chapter|book|section|part|prologue|epilogue\\s+', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': u'c:\\docume~1\\unclei~1\\locals~1\\temp\\calibre_ 0.8.12_tmp_yjdtbn\\calibre_0.8.12_nq9f29.jpeg',
'debug_pipeline': None,
'dehyphenate': True,
'delete_blank_paragraphs': True,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_compress': False,
'duplicate_links_in_toc': False,
'enable_heuristics': False,
'extra_css': None,
'fix_indents': True,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'format_scene_breaks': True,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.4,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x03EBF030>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_blank_line_size': 0.5,
'insert_metadata': False,
'isbn': None,
'italicize_common_cases': True,
'keep_ligatures': False,
'kindlegen': False,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0.0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'markup_chapter_headings': True,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'minimum_line_height': 120.0,
'mobi_ignore_margins': False,
'mobi_toc_at_start': False,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_inline_navbars': True,
'no_inline_toc': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.KindleOutput object at 0x03EBF350>,
'page_breaks_before': u"//*[name()='h1' or name()='h2']",
'personal_doc': u'[PDOC]',
'prefer_author_sort': False,
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'pretty_print': False,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': u'c:\\docume~1\\unclei~1\\locals~1\\temp\\calibre_ 0.8.12_tmp_yjdtbn\\calibre_0.8.12_tqxy2o.opf',
'remove_fake_margins': True,
'remove_first_image': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
'renumber_headings': True,
'replace_scene_breaks': u'',
'rescale_images': False,
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'smarten_punctuation': False,
'sr1_replace': None,
'sr1_search': None,
'sr2_replace': None,
'sr2_search': None,
'sr3_replace': None,
'sr3_search': None,
'tags': None,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'toc_title': None,
'unwrap_lines': True,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: LIT Input running
on c:\docume~1\unclei~1\locals~1\temp\calibre_0.8.12_ tmp_yjdtbn\calibre_0.8.12_5bonua.lit
Parsing all content...
Parsing George%20R.%20R.%20Martin%20-%20A%20Song%20of%20Ice%20and%20Fire%204%20-%20A%20Feast%20for%20Crows.htm ...
Forcing George%20R.%20R.%20Martin%20-%20A%20Song%20of%20Ice%20and%20Fire%204%20-%20A%20Feast%20for%20Crows.htm into XHTML namespace
File 'George%20R.%20R.%20Martin%20-%20A%20Song%20of%20Ice%20and%20Fire%204%20-%20A%20Feast%20for%20Crows.htm' missing <head/> element
Generating default TOC from spine...
Choosing other.ms-coverimage-standard:AFeastForCrows.jpg as the cover
Merging user specified metadata...
Detecting structure...
Auto generated TOC with 0 entries.
Flattening CSS and remapping font sizes...

[DarkRose]

still sitting at 47% after 40 minutes

[theducks]

Notice this line in your log
'George%20R.%20R.%20Martin%20-%20A%20Song%20of%20Ice%20and%20Fire%204%20-%20A%20Feast%20for%20Crows.htm' missing <head/> element