Zip to any other format conversion (OS X)

[Ztrel0cK]

Hi,

I've know it's not a new question, but couldn't find an answer that would help my case.

I've imported a large number of books in zip format (EPUB inside ZIP).
Now I'm trying to add some of the books to kindle and found out that the books cant be converted to any format (have tried most of them). Neither can I open then in Calibre (when double-clicking it just unpacks it and opens the finder in the books folder).

System: MBP, OSX Lion, Calibre 0.8.34
Here is the error desc:

Spoiler:

calibre, version 0.8.34
ERROR: Conversion Error: <b>Failed</b>: Convert book 1 of 1 (Julia Alvarez)

Convert book 1 of 1 (Julia Alvarez)
Processing archive...
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 0.8.34
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0.0,
'book_producer': None,
'breadth_first': False,
'change_justification': u'original',
'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., '\\s*((chapter|book|section|part)\\s+)|((prolog|pr ologue|epilogue)(\\s+|$))', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': '/var/folders/f6/n4svy0890zg863sk0svhjt2c0000gn/T/calibre_0.8.34_tmp_x6Iemu/wFncWB.jpeg',
'debug_pipeline': None,
'dehyphenate': True,
'delete_blank_paragraphs': True,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_package': False,
'dont_split_on_page_breaks': False,
'duplicate_links_in_toc': False,
'enable_heuristics': False,
'epub_flatten': False,
'extra_css': None,
'extract_to': None,
'filter_css': u'',
'fix_indents': True,
'flow_size': 260,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'format_scene_breaks': True,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.4,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x109854c50>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_blank_line_size': 0.5,
'insert_metadata': False,
'isbn': None,
'italicize_common_cases': True,
'keep_ligatures': 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_levels': 5,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'minimum_line_height': 120.0,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_default_epub_cover': False,
'no_inline_navbars': False,
'no_svg_cover': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.TabletOutput object at 0x109853690>,
'page_breaks_before': u"//*[name()='h1' or name()='h2']",
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'preserve_cover_aspect_ratio': False,
'pretty_print': True,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': '/var/folders/f6/n4svy0890zg863sk0svhjt2c0000gn/T/calibre_0.8.34_tmp_x6Iemu/BWBKFl.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'',
'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,
'unsmarten_punctuation': False,
'unwrap_lines': True,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
Python function terminated unexpectedly: Spine is empty
InputFormatPlugin: HTML Input running
on /var/folders/f6/n4svy0890zg863sk0svhjt2c0000gn/T/calibre_0.8.34_tmp_x6Iemu/hvRQc3_plumber_archive/Julia Alvarez/In the Time of the Butterflies (7453)/metadata.opf
Parsing all content...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 147, in main
return run_entry_point()
File "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 116, in run_entry_point
return getattr(pmod, func)()
File "site-packages/calibre/utils/ipc/worker.py", line 187, in main
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/convert/gui_conversion.py", line 31, in gui_convert_override
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/convert/gui_conversion.py", line 25, in gui_convert
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plumber.py", line 959, in run
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/conversion.py", line 204, in __call__
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/html/input.py", line 305, in convert
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/conversion/plumber.py", line 1114, in create_oebbook
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 70, in __call__
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 634, in _all_from_opf
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/oeb/reader.py", line 322, in _spine_from_opf
calibre.ebooks.oeb.base.OEBError: Spine is empty

Thank you!

[kovidgoyal]

zip is not a book format. When calibre detects a single known book format inside a zip file it automatically extracts it. If it did not do that for you, then your zip files probably have multiple files inside the, In that case you will need to manually extract the epubs and add them.

[Ztrel0cK]

Yep, this is the case - I've got covers and nfo in the zip files along with the books. That's going to be a nightmare to split these manually, but looks like there is nothing else i can do =(

[user_none]

What's the point of putting an epub inside of a zip? epub itself is a zip file and natively supports cover and metadata.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by user_none

What's the point of putting an epub inside of a zip? epub itself is a zip file and natively supports cover and metadata.

It is a common way to contain multiple formats for transport and distribution.

One must know that there is a shipping container.
That can be hard to detect without opening.

[Martecius]

http://www.extractnow.com/ does this quite simply although runs under Windows. I used it under fusion on my my to unzip over 1000 files.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Martecius

http://www.extractnow.com/ does this quite simply although runs under Windows. I used it under fusion on my my to unzip over 1000 files.

WinRAR will also extract multiple selected zip/RAR
But you don't need to extract if you know a single format is inside. Calibre will do that for you.
Drag and Drop a Zip with: EPUB,RTF,MOBI,TXT... and Calibre will extract and show the correct file. Only if 2 supported formats exist inside, are the later problems with viewing or conversion.