MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - How to update metatdata on the device from Calibre?

davidfor · 05-03-2015, 09:47 PM

You haven't done anything wrong, it just doesn't work that way. The "Update metadata on cache on the connected device" is not updating the metadata the ereader is using. It is updating a file that calibre uses when looking at the ereaders. It is used to help calibre match the books on the ereaders to books in the library. Calibre updates it when the ereaders is connected. The option is used if you find books that have not been matched properly and use the ereaders list to do the matching.

For the Kobo ereaders, the metadata is read from the books the first time the ereaders sees the book. This usually happens when you disconnect from the PC and the black processing screen is displayed. If you send the book again from calibre, it is not reprocessed. Hence, any updated metadata is not read from the book. You have to delete the book and resend it to have it processed again. Or, you can use my Kobo Utilities plugin. That has a function to update the metadata in the database on Kobo ereaders. This reads the metadata from the calibre library and doesn't touch the actual books on the ereader.

There is a complication on the above. Kobo ereaders use the full file name and path as the key to which book is which. This means you can have to exact copies of the book on the ereader so long as the file name is not the same. If you change the metadata in calibre, this can affect the file name and path used when you send the book. The save template in the driver is used for this. The default looks something like "{authors}/{title} - {authors}". That means if you change the author or title and resend the book, it gets a different file name and the ereader considers it a different book. For the changes you have, you would probably find the book in the library list on the ereader with the two different forms of the author name.

05-03-2015, 09:47 PM	#2
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,905 Karma: 47303824 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	You haven't done anything wrong, it just doesn't work that way. The "Update metadata on cache on the connected device" is not updating the metadata the ereader is using. It is updating a file that calibre uses when looking at the ereaders. It is used to help calibre match the books on the ereaders to books in the library. Calibre updates it when the ereaders is connected. The option is used if you find books that have not been matched properly and use the ereaders list to do the matching. For the Kobo ereaders, the metadata is read from the books the first time the ereaders sees the book. This usually happens when you disconnect from the PC and the black processing screen is displayed. If you send the book again from calibre, it is not reprocessed. Hence, any updated metadata is not read from the book. You have to delete the book and resend it to have it processed again. Or, you can use my Kobo Utilities plugin. That has a function to update the metadata in the database on Kobo ereaders. This reads the metadata from the calibre library and doesn't touch the actual books on the ereader. There is a complication on the above. Kobo ereaders use the full file name and path as the key to which book is which. This means you can have to exact copies of the book on the ereader so long as the file name is not the same. If you change the metadata in calibre, this can affect the file name and path used when you send the book. The save template in the driver is used for this. The default looks something like "{authors}/{title} - {authors}". That means if you change the author or title and resend the book, it gets a different file name and the ereader considers it a different book. For the changes you have, you would probably find the book in the library list on the ereader with the two different forms of the author name.