Problems importing ebooks

[simogere]

Hi guys, I have a problem with calibre trying adding my ebooks. I have about 1000 ebooks each one in its folder. The file name is like "Stephen King - The dome.pdf". I tried adding all my files with the option "Add books from directories" (the second option from the adding menu), but almost all the metadata are wrong. The cover is ok (I think it extracts the first page of the pdf file). I tried to set up in "Preferences -> Adding books" this expression "(?P<author>[^_]+) - (?P<title>.+)" unchecking the option "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name". With those settings, the import works fine and it import the correct title and author, but there's no cover! I would to know if there's any solution for my problem. Maybe an option to download the covers directly from the file.

I don't know... but I'll appreciate any kind of suggestion.

Thank in advance, Simone.

[simogere]

Any tip?

[jackie_w]

I thought Calibre extracted the cover from the book as it was importing, so I'm not sure what happened in your case.

If you highlight one of your books you can do this manually:

• Press the EditMetadata button.
• Highlight one of the formats in the 'Available formats' box (top right).
• Click the small brown book icon -- top left of 4 small icons surrounding the 'Available formats' box.

[Manichean]

I think you're seeing two different sets of behaviour: When you're reading metadata from file content, Calibre reads the metadata from the files including the covers, but most of your files seem to have garbate metadata. When you read from file name, what information can be extracted is correct, but, as Calibre doesn't look for metadata inside the files, the covers don't get extracted.

[simogere]

Originally Posted by Manichean

I think you're seeing two different sets of behaviour: When you're reading metadata from file content, Calibre reads the metadata from the files including the covers, but most of your files seem to have garbate metadata. When you read from file name, what information can be extracted is correct, but, as Calibre doesn't look for metadata inside the files, the covers don't get extracted.

Yes, It's works like you said. I would to know if is it possible to add ebooks without reading metadata but reading the cover!

Simone

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by simogere

Yes, It's works like you said. I would to know if is it possible to add ebooks without reading metadata but reading the cover!

No. .

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by simogere

With those settings, the import works fine and it import the correct title and author, but there's no cover! I would to know if there's any solution for my problem. Maybe an option to download the covers directly from the file.

There is a quick manual solution that gets the cover from the book. Select 1 book, open edit metadata window then click on the brown book icon (see attached) and then click the OK button down the bottom.

[simogere]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

There is a quick manual solution that gets the cover from the book. Select 1 book, open edit metadata window then click on the brown book icon (see attached) and then click the OK button down the bottom.

Ok, I know, but I should do this way for for all my 1000 ebooks... 1000 times! It would be useful to do this "cover extraction" for all the ebooks only one time.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by simogere

Ok, I know, but I should do this way for for all my 1000 ebooks... 1000 times! It would be useful to do this "cover extraction" for all the ebooks only one time.

Calibre can get metadata from inside files, from filenames, or from opf files. You've got good cover metadata inside, but the rest of the internal metadata is bad. If there's a button to get the good cover from inside, should there also be a button to get good titles, but ignore author? Or one for getting good publisher info, but ignoring ... You see the problem?

In fact, there is an option like this on the ToDo list to pick and choose the metadata being imported, but Calibre is volunteer supported, so it gets done when someone has the time and inclination to do it.

I'm pretty sure you can actually do what you want to do using existing Calibre command line tools, but you'll have to write a lot of batch files and play around to get it done.