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Old 10-06-2012, 07:48 PM   #1
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Calibre questions
Have a couple of Calibre + Kobo related questions that I was hoping someone could answer.

1. Sometimes the book cover on sideloaded (through Calibre of course) epubs are really small. It looks fine on Calibre, dimensions seem big enough, but on the Kobo, it only takes up maybe half the screen (aligned top middle), making it really ugly when the device is sleeping/off.

2. Calibre does not let me directly edit my sideloaded epubs that are on the device. Is it possible to edit the metadata in the "library" section of Calibre, and somehow have that change applied to the books that are already on the device (without deleting and reuploading the book to it)? Simply because I do not want to lose track of what page I was on, have to put it in shelves again, etc.

Thanks in advance for any help.
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Old 10-06-2012, 09:03 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by kobokobe View Post
1. Sometimes the book cover on sideloaded (through Calibre of course) epubs are really small. It looks fine on Calibre, dimensions seem big enough, but on the Kobo, it only takes up maybe half the screen (aligned top middle), making it really ugly when the device is sleeping/off.
There are two parts to this.

The Kobo devices don't actually use the cover image that is inside anepub. It generates the first page of the book and uses that. In general, this is just the cover image, but it can be more. So, exactly what the cover images used is based on the formatting for the first page. If the image gets stretched over the full screen, that is what you will see. So, what you get depends on how that first page is laid out. Calibre does have some options for changing this during a conversion, but I haven't played with them recently.

There is a second part is that the Kobo saves the cover images in different sizes depending on firmware level. For pre-2.x.x, it was 600*800 so it covered the whole screen. For 2.x.x, it saves it as 355*530. It then displays this image when sleeping or power off. There is also an option in the to stretch this image to cover the whole screen. If it isn't stretched, then the image sits in the middle of the screen with space around it.

One thing, the sizes above are for the Touch, I don't know if the Glo is storing images as different sizes. If someone wants to have a look, I can tell you what to do.
Quote:
2. Calibre does not let me directly edit my sideloaded epubs that are on the device. Is it possible to edit the metadata in the "library" section of Calibre, and somehow have that change applied to the books that are already on the device (without deleting and reuploading the book to it)? Simply because I do not want to lose track of what page I was on, have to put it in shelves again, etc.
Changing the metadata for books in the calibre library requires a removing and sending the books to the device again. This isn't likely to change. But the only metadata that you can see on the device is the title, author and description.

But, the shelves are different. If your calibre preferences have metadata management set to automatic, and the appropriate settings on the driver (column name for shelves and whether to create them), books will be added to the shelves the next time calibre does a sync.
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Old 10-06-2012, 09:09 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidfor View Post
But, the shelves are different. If your calibre preferences have metadata management set to automatic, and the appropriate settings on the driver (column name for shelves and whether to create them), books will be added to the shelves the next time calibre does a sync.

That's good. So if we change the metadata in the column used for the shelves, how do we get it to 'sync'. Do we have to schedule a dummy book to be copied or something, or is 'sync' something I haven't discovered in Calibre yet?
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Old 10-06-2012, 09:58 PM   #4
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That's good. So if we change the metadata in the column used for the shelves, how do we get it to 'sync'. Do we have to schedule a dummy book to be copied or something, or is 'sync' something I haven't discovered in Calibre yet?
The shelf sync is done each time calibre sees the device. So, disconnect and reconnect or stop and restart calibre. Sending a book over should do it as well. A separate sync option in calibre would be good, but I haven't seen one.
Last edited by davidfor; 10-06-2012 at 10:34 PM. Reason: I have never claimed to be able to spell
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Old 10-06-2012, 10:04 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by davidfor View Post
The shelf sync is done each time calibre sees the device. So, disconnect and reconnect or stop and restart calibre. Sending a book over should do it as well. A separate ync option in calibre would be good, but I haven't seen one.
Ah, that's easy then. Thanks.
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Old 10-06-2012, 10:48 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidfor View Post
There are two parts to this.

The Kobo devices don't actually use the cover image that is inside anepub. It generates the first page of the book and uses that. In general, this is just the cover image, but it can be more. So, exactly what the cover images used is based on the formatting for the first page. If the image gets stretched over the full screen, that is what you will see. So, what you get depends on how that first page is laid out. Calibre does have some options for changing this during a conversion, but I haven't played with them recently.

There is a second part is that the Kobo saves the cover images in different sizes depending on firmware level. For pre-2.x.x, it was 600*800 so it covered the whole screen. For 2.x.x, it saves it as 355*530. It then displays this image when sleeping or power off. There is also an option in the to stretch this image to cover the whole screen. If it isn't stretched, then the image sits in the middle of the screen with space around it.

One thing, the sizes above are for the Touch, I don't know if the Glo is storing images as different sizes. If someone wants to have a look, I can tell you what to do.


Changing the metadata for books in the calibre library requires a removing and sending the books to the device again. This isn't likely to change. But the only metadata that you can see on the device is the title, author and description.

But, the shelves are different. If your calibre preferences have metadata management set to automatic, and the appropriate settings on the driver (column name for shelves and whether to create them), books will be added to the shelves the next time calibre does a sync.
Thanks a lot for the detailed response. I guess I'll just have to reload some of my books.

As for the cover image, how do I find out which of the two is the issue? For one of the books that I have the cover problem with, I tried opening it in Calibre, and the very first page is the cover, nice and big.

Also, I do have a Glo, how would I go about checking if it does store images at a different size?
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Old 10-06-2012, 11:51 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kobokobe View Post
As for the cover image, how do I find out which of the two is the issue? For one of the books that I have the cover problem with, I tried opening it in Calibre, and the very first page is the cover, nice and big.
What does the cover page look like when you go to it in the book on the Glo? Is it full screen, centered or what? That is what the device is using for the cover image.
Quote:
Also, I do have a Glo, how would I go about checking if it does store images at a different size?
With the Glo connected, look in the directory ".kobo\images" on the device. There will be one or more files for each book. The image file names are made up of the full path of the book on the device, plus different suffixes. The book I am currently reading has, with their sizes:

file____mnt_onboard_Niven,_Larry_Protector_-_Larry_Niven_epub - N3_LIBRARY_GRID.parsed
file____mnt_onboard_Niven,_Larry_Protector_-_Larry_Niven_epub - N3_FULL.parsed
file____mnt_onboard_Niven,_Larry_Protector_-_Larry_Niven_epub - N3_LIBRARY_FULL.parsed

The size are 149*198, 600*800 and 355*473 respectively. The images are generated as needed, so some of the might be missing. With previous firmware, there were a couple of other versions as well. The files are just jpegs with a strange extension.

And I have just discovered something new in the new firmware. The 2.0.0 firmware did not create the "N3_FULL" version. But, 2.1.4 does. A little testing and I found that the "N3_FULL" version is only created when the "Full screen" option is selected in the settings. Otherwise I think it uses the "N3_LIBRARY_FULL" version centred on the screen.

Another difference is that the images are not stored for files on the SD card. It has been a while since I looked, but I am sure that 2.0.0 did store them.
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Old 10-07-2012, 11:49 AM   #8
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While waiting for your answer last night I reloaded all my sideloaded books and it seems to have fixed the problem for some reason...I did convert the books to rid of embedded font/margin, not sure if that had any impact?

For what it's worth, in the images folder, it has full, library full, and library grid for each book it seems.

Anyway, thanks for your help!
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Old 10-07-2012, 04:27 PM   #9
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calibre has been updated to v0.9.1, and now includes drivers for the Kobo Touch version 2.0+ firmware and Kobo Glo and Mini.

Since I can't get Mini or Glo here in the US, I can't vouch for it, or course.
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Old 10-07-2012, 05:58 PM   #10
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Since I can't get Mini or Glo here in the US, I can't vouch for it, or course.
You're flogging a dead horse! No one here is going to be able to make the new Kobos available in the States any sooner. Get one from here http://www.shopereaders.com/category-s/257.htm and pay a premium to get it sooner or wait until it is eventually available in stores. In the meantime leave that poor horse alone! It's dead and we can't revive it for you!!!
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Old 10-07-2012, 08:06 PM   #11
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calibre has been updated to v0.9.1, and now includes drivers for the Kobo Touch version 2.0+ firmware and Kobo Glo and Mini.
Really? I hadn't noticed.
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Old 10-07-2012, 10:11 PM   #12
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Actually, I've ordered a Mini from shopreaders.com - they don't sell horses, though...
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