Aura Need help with Calibre

[Diruuo]

Alright so I finally decided to install Calibre and try some sort of shelf management with it.

I followed the steps, one by one in the Shelf Management guide that's a Sticky in this forum, beyond that I seem unable to figure out ANYTHING AT ALL. I downloaded metadata for all the books I have, I think I updated them within my Calibre Library but I seem unable to send them to the Device, I also see no way to sync between the two and I also have no clue what to do with the actual shelf settings, the plugboard and etc that I setup first.

So I followed the baby steps in that thread, and then I am completely lost beyond that point.

Do I need to factory reset and remove all my content from the device before I even start?

How do I actually create collections that make sense?

Should I have even bothered with this downloaded metadata? It seemed to have changed a lot of things, but regardless of Calibre claiming that it will use the already existing metadata of categories that are lacking data in the lookup it didn't actually do that.

How do I convert to kepub while sending to the device? Is there any point in converting?

I assumed there was some way of building a library within Calibre, then literally syncing it with my device (sending it to my device) with all of the modifications/setup/shelves/etc done within Calibre so everything is nice and tidy. As it stands the things I did triggered a "processing content" after I unplugged my device and nothing seemed to have changed, that downloaded metadata just doesn't seem to be there.

I am incredibly, and quite surprisingly totally confused.

EDIT: I misdiagnosed my issue. It seems that I can no longer force a refresh by double tapping the screen (opening the menu/closing it). It opens it up and then simply closes it and no refresh occurs. I think my reader's settings to refresh once every chapter are still active and functioning correctly.

Disregard the small text:
Additionally: How come I have the refresh bug on 3.18.0 when I have no modifications to the device after the update (no patches/no config file edited), I thought it only affected people that use the FullScreen option in the config file.

TL;DR; Please walk me through Library (not shelf) Management with Calibre in baby steps.

[davidfor]

The steps for getting a book onto a Kobo device (or just about any device) with calibre is:

1. Add the book to your calibre library
2. Make any needed changes to the book (metadata or to the text)
3. Connect the device and let calibre do it's initial connection steps
4. Send the book to the device
5. Disconnect the device and let it do it's thing.

Everything else you do is a optional and a complication that you decide to add. And even the second step above is not really needed. If after doing the above, the book isn't on the device and in a way you can read it, then there is something broken.

For the rest, I'm not sure what to say. Your post is disorganised enough that I'm not sure what is going on. At one point you seem to say you have shelve/collections working, but at another point they aren't. For the metadata, I can't tell if you are talking about new books or books already on the device. You need to clear up what you are doing and what you want to achieve to get a better answer.

The kepub vs epub is one that has been discussed heavily. The only answer I can give is to do whichever suits you best. The handling on the device is different, so you need to decide which way you like better and go with that.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Diruuo

TL;DR; Please walk me through Library (not shelf) Management with Calibre in baby steps.

For myself, I open Calibre on the computer, connect my Kobo to the computer and hit the connect button on screen.

After a while, Calibre realizes the Kobo is connected and the busy twirler in the lower right corner starts twirling. After that task in finished, I see the on device column populated. Since I keep my epubs on an external uSD card, it shows as Card A. On that card is a eLibrary directory in which the ebooks are actually stored -- the second screenshot is the configuration I use for Send to Device. So basically, if a book did not show an entry in the On Device column, I would right click, select Send to device and then Send to storage card A. Once the books have been sent, I safely eject the ereader. How to do this depends on your OS. My choice was to add the SmartEject plugin to Calibre and use it.

Once the ebooks have been sent to my Kobo and processed, I reconnect the ereader and use davidfor's KoboUtilities to send the series information. You need the two steps to allow the database entries to be created so the information can be added.

As for shelves? I'm addicted to using the Search function to locate ebooks on my Kobo so have long since given up using shelves. Search will use title, author, series and keyword so works for me and the live results generally mean I find what I want with few keystrokes. Say I want to find Terry Pratchett's Going Postal -- by the time, I've typed goi, it's in the search results. Not quite as good with series with a large number of members such as The Grantville Gazette -- the world's longest running ebook soap opera.

I would recommend setting a directory for your ebooks making sure the name does not start with a period '.' as your Kobo will not look for books in a *nix OS hidden directory (my choice was the pretentious eLibrary hence the eLibrary/ in the Send to device configuration).

Good luck!

[Diruuo]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The steps for getting a book onto a Kobo device (or just about any device) with calibre is:

1. Add the book to your calibre library
2. Make any needed changes to the book (metadata or to the text)
3. Connect the device and let calibre do it's initial connection steps
4. Send the book to the device
5. Disconnect the device and let it do it's thing.

Everything else you do is a optional and a complication that you decide to add. And even the second step above is not really needed. If after doing the above, the book isn't on the device and in a way you can read it, then there is something broken.

For the rest, I'm not sure what to say. Your post is disorganised enough that I'm not sure what is going on. At one point you seem to say you have shelve/collections working, but at another point they aren't. For the metadata, I can't tell if you are talking about new books or books already on the device. You need to clear up what you are doing and what you want to achieve to get a better answer.

The kepub vs epub is one that has been discussed heavily. The only answer I can give is to do whichever suits you best. The handling on the device is different, so you need to decide which way you like better and go with that.

The reason for why it's so disorganized is because I was surprisingly confused by the whole thing. I apologize for that and I will try to remedy this issue with the post that follows.

I'll try to explain things again in a more organized fashion providing all the information I have and getting all of the things I want working actually working.

As it Stands I have a Kobo Aura with Firmware 3.18.0, it doesn't have any modifications or patches as of right now. The Aura has a few Kobo synced Kepubs, and a bunch of epubs that I copy pasted into my Books folder way back before I decided that I wanted to use Calibre for management of my ebook collection.

Question #1: Do I need to remove all of these manually copied books from my device so that Calibre can send updated versions of them?

When I say I had "shelves working" I meant "I did all of the steps in the Sticky thread, and nothing exploded" working. I have no idea how to employ those shelves for management of my books.

Question #2: If I have setup Calibre as shown in the Sticky, have a plugboard setup (as per the Sticky again) how do I then use those things to my advantage by making (or populating) the actual Shelves so that I can send them to my device?

Question #3: How do I send Shelves to my device or does the device simply organize things in Shelves based on metadata?

I think I value the ability for quicker page turning more then I care about the space taken up by the Header and Footer when it comes to Kepub vs epub. I'm not sure if there are any other major differences that I care about.

Question #4: If I decide that I want to read only in Kepub instead of epub, how do I make it so that Calibre automatically converts when sending to the device?


Thank you for all of the replies and I apologize for the initial confusion caused by my chaotic post.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Diruuo

Question #1: Do I need to remove all of these manually copied books from my device so that Calibre can send updated versions of them?

Calibre has no problem with the source of the books. If it can match the books on the device to one in its library, it will work. If there is a problem with the version of the book on the device, you might have to remove the book and resend it. The Kobo devices process them the first time the book is seen. During this, it extracts the metadata including the ToC. These are stored in the internal database. If you resend the book using calibre, changes to the metadata and ToC are not picked up. If you change the ToC, or internal structure of the book, you need to remove it before resending. But, if it is just metadata changes, you can use my Kobo Utilities plugin to update the database on the device instead.

When I say I had "shelves working" I meant "I did all of the steps in the Sticky thread, and nothing exploded" working. I have no idea how to employ those shelves for management of my books.

Question #2: If I have setup Calibre as shown in the Sticky, have a plugboard setup (as per the Sticky again) how do I then use those things to my advantage by making (or populating) the actual Shelves so that I can send them to my device?

Question #3: How do I send Shelves to my device or does the device simply organize things in Shelves based on metadata?

Collections, or shelves as Kobo used to call them, are a way of grouping books together on the device. What the groups are, is completely up to you. How you use them, is up to you. Some people like a collection for each series. Or based on some sort of tag.

If you do the collection management from calibre, it is based on metadata in the library. You choose one or more columns and when the device is connected, calibre will create the collections and add or remove books from them as needed.

The plugboards have nothing to do with the collections. They are a way to fiddle with the metadata as the book is sent to the device. The reason to do this is because the different devices don't handle the metadata as well as calibre does. And the most common reason is that none of the devices handle the series info well. The Kobo devices show the series, but they don't allow sorting on the series info. So, a lot of people use a the plugboard to prefix the book title with the series info so that a title sort will work.

I think I value the ability for quicker page turning more then I care about the space taken up by the Header and Footer when it comes to Kepub vs epub. I'm not sure if there are any other major differences that I care about.

Question #4: If I decide that I want to read only in Kepub instead of epub, how do I make it so that Calibre automatically converts when sending to the device?

If you want to use kepubs, you need use either the KoboTouchExtended driver or the Kepub Output plugin. The former converts the books to kepub as they are sent to the device and the latter allows you to convert the books to kepub in the calibre library and send using the standard KoboTouch driver. Either of these can be installed from the plugin section of the calibre preferences.

[Diruuo]

I never posted an update to this so I'll do it now just so that the thread has some closure.

I have continued using Calibre, most of my problems stemmed from having side-loaded books that Calibre identified as being both in the library and on the device, so it never sent them and for some reason updating metadata wasn't working. I simply removed all of my side-loaded epubs from the device and told Calibre to send everything over, the KoboTouchExtended plugin kicked in so now I have a library of kobo epubs on my device with nice full titles and a fair bit of information (I downloaded a lot of metadata so it updated very nicely).

I'm faced with a bit of a problem when it comes to updating the covers and getting them to look the same, the problem is detailed here - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...90#post3188290

So far so good on everything else. Managing ebooks with Calibre turned out fairly easy, now I need to add series information to everything so that things get clumped up in nice convenient collections on the device. That and fix my cover issue so that my lock screen looks nice and shiny rather then blurry and pixely.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Diruuo

I never posted an update to this so I'll do it now just so that the thread has some closure.

I have continued using Calibre, most of my problems stemmed from having side-loaded books that Calibre identified as being both in the library and on the device, so it never sent them

Calibre doesn't automatically send any books. And having books on the device that match books in the calibre library does not stop you from sending the books from calibre again. And calibre matches the books on the device to books in your library so that you know what is where and and can work out what you need to do.

Calibre also rarely fails to send a book to the device when you decide to. If it can't, you will see an error. But, most errors are for the few database updates that the Kobo driver does. These happen after the book has been put on the device.

and for some reason updating metadata wasn't working.

To update metadata on the device you needed to remove the books and send them again. Other than the series info, nothing is changed from the drive.

I simply removed all of my side-loaded epubs from the device and told Calibre to send everything over, the KoboTouchExtended plugin kicked in so now I have a library of kobo epubs on my device with nice full titles and a fair bit of information (I downloaded a lot of metadata so it updated very nicely).

So you got your metadata when you did what I said above and removed and resent the books. Plus the decision to read kepubs

I'm faced with a bit of a problem when it comes to updating the covers and getting them to look the same, the problem is detailed here - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...90#post3188290

That's a "Why do they keep changing the cover" and "Who was the idiot that thought this look good" problem that can only be overcome by lots of searching. The suggestions in that thread should help.