Generate Cover

[Mythlandia]

By default if there is no cover, Calibre uses a pleasant, but boring, closed hardbook book. Sometimes Calibre automatically creates a really, really neat automatic cover from the Title, Author and the Calibre Logo Image. It appears apparently at random in my library.

How can you explicitly use this option?

[itimpi]

Under Preferences->Conversion-Structure Detection set the option for inserting the Metadata as a page at the start of the book.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Mythlandia

By default if there is no cover, Calibre uses a pleasant, but boring, closed hardbook book. Sometimes Calibre automatically creates a really, really neat automatic cover from the Title, Author and the Calibre Logo Image. It appears apparently at random in my library.

How can you explicitly use this option?

Some books have a clearly defined included cover in the file and you get that by default.
Others, you have to help along

You can set the Browser cover "from a selected format"

Did you try and get (download) a cover from the Edit meta-data editor screen?
After you get the cover you wish in the browser, you may have to convert again to use the current cover in that format.

[Mythlandia]

Thanks "theducks", that provides a work around.

When you convert a book without a cover to ePub, Calibre generates a first class cover. After the book has been converted, you can go back to the meta-data and load the cover from the ePub format.

Is there any way to just get Calibre to generate that image as the default for the books? It is so much better with the title and author.

[kovidgoyal]

Generating that cover is relatively slow. It would slow down import quite a bit. Also since most books on initial import do not have correct title/author metadata, the cover would be wrong and would have to be regenerated after the metadata is corrected.

What I can do is add a generate default cover button to the edit meta information dialog. Open a ticket for it, so I don't forget.

[wayrad]

I've got a somewhat related question. I recently bought an Android phone and started using Aldiko, so I'm anxious to convert books I've scanned to .epub with pretty downloaded covers (being too lazy to go back and scan the covers ). I have Word files of the OCR'd and proofread text, so I resaved as filtered HTML and added them to Calibre, after which I added downloaded metadata and covers and converted to .epub. In some cases I had .rtf files instead and added them directly to Calibre. I see the cover in Calibre, but on my phone, it only shows briefly when I open some books. Books that I purchased in .epub format show the cover until I turn to the first page of text. I'm very unfamiliar with .epub, never having previously owned a mobile device that could read it (edited to add: I guess that's not true - my n800 would, but I hardly ever read on it) - can anyone please tell me why this happens and what to do about it?

[kovidgoyal]

In the epub output section of the conversion settings check no SVG cover

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

In the epub output section of the conversion settings check no SVG cover

Thank you very much! I'll try it.

[thetiptonian]

I'm having the same difficulty as wayrad, but checking "no SVG cover" doesn't fix the problem. As with wayrad, the books I've purchased in epub format display the cover, and those that I've converted do not. I've extracted the epub files and compared them, and in the purchased books, there is a "cover.xhtml" file in the OEBPS directory that references a jpeg version of the cover that is output to the OEPBS/images directory. The non-purchased (Calibre-converted) epub doesn't have either the cover.xhtml or the referenced jpeg files.

Any suggestions as to how to get Calibre to output these files? I had converted files in Calibre prior to version 0.6.5 that worked fine.

[thetiptonian]

Oops! Should check before I speak - Checking "No SVG Cover" did work! The cover.xhtml file wasn't created, but the cover displays properly now anyway.

Thanks kovidgoyal.

[wayrad]

It only worked partially for me. Instead of only seeing the cover for a fraction of a second, now I see it for a couple of seconds behind the "Opening book" message. Then it's gone. Edited to add: Just spotted something I might have done wrong... going to try again...Nope, same result.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by wayrad

It only worked partially for me. Instead of only seeing the cover for a fraction of a second, now I see it for a couple of seconds behind the "Opening book" message. Then it's gone. Edited to add: Just spotted something I might have done wrong... going to try again...Nope, same result.

Does your book reader remember the last page viewed? It may load , the jump to that page.

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by theducks

Does your book reader remember the last page viewed? It may load , the jump to that page.

It can remember my place, but I've tested freshly imported books after deleting the previous copies. It displays the image briefly while opening the book (behind the "opening book" window), then goes by itself to a blank page. Paging forward then gives me the first page of the book. Paging back will not return me to the image.

I should also mention that the thumbnail cover image shows just fine in Aldiko's bookshelf views - I just can't get it to stay put when I open the book.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by wayrad

It only worked partially for me. Instead of only seeing the cover for a fraction of a second, now I see it for a couple of seconds behind the "Opening book" message. Then it's gone. Edited to add: Just spotted something I might have done wrong... going to try again...Nope, same result.

Setting the No SVG cover option in the EPUB output section causes calibre to use a standard .jpg for the cover and not .svg (which your device can't display). Once the option is set when you convert a book the cover that you have selected will be created as a .jpg file and show as the first page of your book.

Any book that you had previously converted will not be changed by setting the No SVG cover option. A book has to be converted for this to work.

If you have done this and it still isn't shown, I'm at a loss on how to move forward.

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If you have done this and it still isn't shown, I'm at a loss on how to move forward.

Yes, that (reconversion) is what I've done. The cover does display but only briefly. With epub files I bought or downloaded from Feedbooks etc, it stays put until I turn the page.