Suggestion for Download Metadata and Covers

[tazem]

Just a suggestion, it would be nice to have some sort of progress bar for the Download Metadata and Covers. Just to have an estimate of the time remaining.

Also it would be great if this could be done in the background, freeing the program for other things. Maybe even a selection of Fetch Now or Fetch Background. It is not a problem when doing just a few, say 10 or less, that is usually just a couple minutes. But when fetching for around 1,000 it can take a very long time.

As I have just started using Calibre, and have over 50,000 titles to add, I am looking for ways to save time and speed things up.

Thanks
tazem

3 hours later ... I think it will do the background part. It has been showing the message Downloading MetaData for 930 book(s) for about 6 hours now. I am not sure if it still really working or not. I tried clearing the Search box and that brought back all the entries and the message stayed in the center of the screen.

I could select any record except the ones right under the message. The edit functions all worked. I could even fetch metadata and covers from the edit screen. Not sure if the original command is still working so I will wait a couple more hours before trying to close the program.

Does anyone know if data is written when fetched? I would hate to lose anything/

[speakingtohe]

Wow that is a lot of titles. AFAIK the data is written after each book but I could be wrong
I stopped it once midway and the data was written for all the titles.
Perhaps it had just stalled on the last one or something.

I no longer use this method as I found that it would often pick an omnibus or collection of books instead of the original title so I had to hand check anyway and with the wrong titles inserted this was more trouble than doing 50 or so at a time by using edit metadata individually.

Lucky for me I only had about 7000 ebooks and I manage to get through a hundred most days.

Unfortunately a lot of time is taken up by checking readability and removing headers page numbers etc.
Don't know how it could be done without Calibre

[tazem]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Wow that is a lot of titles. AFAIK the data is written after each book but I could be wrong
I stopped it once midway and the data was written for all the titles.
Perhaps it had just stalled on the last one or something.

I no longer use this method as I found that it would often pick an omnibus or collection of books instead of the original title so I had to hand check anyway and with the wrong titles inserted this was more trouble than doing 50 or so at a time by using edit metadata individually.

Lucky for me I only had about 7000 ebooks and I manage to get through a hundred most days.

LOL Yes, you could say I have more than a few. And this is not counting the audio books. I guess you could call me a Librarian for the Visually Impaired. I track down ebooks and audio books for a group here in town. Ebook are great for enlarging the fonts to a viewable size for many of them.

I finally closed Calibre and when restarted it appears that nothing was saved. I'll just have to stick to 100 or so at a time. Maybe there was just too much and not enough memory or something. That is why a progress bar would be nice. I couldn't even tell that it was locked up.

It seems that the first on the list is the one that is selected. That is why I have Overwrite Author and Title turned off by default. Then it usually only takes a quick scan to check.

There are about 5,400 in already. That is about 10% of them. Trying to get about 500 or so done a day. Just getting them into Calibre that is. It will then be much easier to sort and check, and convert, and ...
Why was I doing this again??

Oh well, back to the grind...

tazem

[speakingtohe]

Sounds like a worthwhile project. Hope it goes well
Helen

[Starson17]

I no longer use this method as I found that it would often pick an omnibus or collection of books instead of the original title so I had to hand check anyway and with the wrong titles inserted this was more trouble than doing 50 or so at a time by using edit metadata individually.

Originally Posted by tazem

That is why I have Overwrite Author and Title turned off by default.

I wrote the code that provides the option to turn off Overwrite Author and Title during metadata fetching. (Whooppee - I managed to stumble through the code and make Kovid's program do less ) Nonetheless, it's nice to see that option is actually useful to others. Its purpose was primarily to protect the author/title during bulk metadata fetches. Then you can go back with a single metadata fetch for any that look wrong and see the search results, then make a better choice. I also leave it off by default.

[speakingtohe]

I wrote the code that provides the option to turn off Overwrite Author and Title during metadata fetching. (Whooppee - I managed to stumble through the code and make Kovid's program do less ) Nonetheless, it's nice to see that option is actually useful to others. Its purpose was primarily to protect the author/title during bulk metadata fetches. Then you can go back with a single metadata fetch for any that look wrong and see the search results, then make a better choice. I also leave it off by default.

Where do you turn it off by default. I have looked and ooked. Probably glaringly obvious but I can't see it. I always just uncheck the checkbox for each file when I am editing metadata individually.

Thanks Helen

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Where do you turn it off by default.

Preferences| General | "Overwrite ... by default when fetching metadata"

[speakingtohe]

@Starson17
Thank you
Right in front of me
Helen