Add Covers in Bulk

[sp000n]

I have a number of PDF files that show without covers (or just the Calibre default brown one). When I select an individual title and hit the "Edit metadata" button, there's an identical brown cover button towards the top. I select that and the first few pages of the PDF file are rendered from which I can choose a cover. Yay!

The process is pretty slow, however, and I feel it could be automated as I ALWAYS choose the first page as the cover. My scanner source(s) never add anything before the cover.

Selecting multiple files and hitting the "Edit metadata" button does launch the bulk metada button but none of the options render a cover from the PDF file, even the one that says "Set from ebook file(s)".

Can someone assist me in assigning the first page of multiple PDFs as their individual book cover, please?

[kovidgoyal]

The bulk metadata edit function, set cover from file will extarct the first page of the pdf as the cover. Indeed, normally, simplya dding the pdf file to calibre will extract the first page as the cover, unless you have either tuned off metadata reading from file contents in Preferences->Adding books, or you have disabled the pdf metadata reading plugin in Preferences->plugins

[sp000n]

Kovid, thanks for the reply!

I don't doubt for a moment that you're describing the intended behavior of those functions but I haven't had a single PDF cover extracted without manually doing it myself. I also double-checked those settings; neither are disabled.

To that end, I finally automated the process myself with AutoHotKey. My (amateur) script follows. It's not pretty, but it squared my entire magazine library away in over a single workday!

IfWinExist calibre - ||; Library name appears here but partial window name is adequate.
{
WinActivate
}
else
{
Run "C:\Program Files\Calibre2\calibre.exe"; I run the x64 bit version
WinWait calibre - ||;
WinActivate
}

Loop 624; change this to match your own number of files
{
Click 130, 70
WinWait Edit Metadata
Click 695, 80
Sleep 5000; my pauses give computers, network drives, etc. time to process
IfWinExist ERROR: Could not read cover; whoops move on
{
Send {Esc}
Sleep 1000
Send {Esc}
}
else
{
Sleep 30000
MouseMove 75, 140
Click 2
Sleep 5000
Click 695, 680
}
Sleep 5000
Send {Down}
Sleep 5000
}