Covers in Calibre

[goldilocks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Okay, I guess that confirms what I suspected might be the case.

So it seems that this might still be the problem (although Add settings could be the culprit as well).

I should think, if the cover is extracted based on the first image (and not marked as cover) then when sending the book, the cover will not be updated, and when converting/embedding, the cover will be doubled.

I do end up with lots of double covers! I have the Add setting checked: Read metadata from file contents rather than file name.

[eschwartz]

Well, the double covers I suspect would come from a lack of properly-defined covers, so it needn't matter what the Add settings are.

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I should think, if the cover is extracted based on the first image (and not marked as cover) then when sending the book, the cover will not be updated, and when converting/embedding, the cover will be doubled.

If the cover is extracted using the book icon/set from file options and it pulls the first image as the cover, Calibre will then add a cover.xhtml page and a second copy of the first image now renamed cover.jpg to the book file. Both before and after Send To Device or Modify Epub it will show duplicate copies of that image in the book file. For my purposes that's usually not an issue but for others where the image is already showing on the first page, then yeah, it's probably an issue.

[BetterRed]

If you have the Read metadata from file contents rather than the file name setting unchecked (ie get metadata from file name) then calibre will not extract the cover. I think it's been that way since I started using calibre 3 years or more since.

I've often wondered why there wasn't an option to always extract the cover from the format given there's no way of putting the cover image in the file name

Not sure if its been said - the extract from format is available in bulk, if you mark the books you add then as long as the marks remain, you can show all marked books, and apply the extract cover to them in bulk.

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BookJunkieLI

If the cover is extracted using the book icon/set from file options and it pulls the first image as the cover, Calibre will then add a cover.xhtml page and a second copy of the first image now renamed cover.jpg to the book file. Both before and after Send To Device or Modify Epub it will show duplicate copies of that image in the book file. For my purposes that's usually not an issue but for others where the image is already showing on the first page, then yeah, it's probably an issue.

So, it modifies the copy in the calibre library? Odd, I thought that was usually a no-no...

It certainly doesn't update the copy in the library when you use Download Cover.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

So, it modifies the copy in the calibre library? Odd, I thought that was usually a no-no...

It certainly doesn't update the copy in the library when you use Download Cover.

I know you believe you understood what you think BookJunkieLI wrote, but I am not sure BookJunkieLI realises that what he wrote is probably not what he meant

Extract a book cover from a format file in Metadata Edit (single or bulk) does not modify the format file.

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I know you believe you understood what you think BookJunkieLI wrote, but I am not sure BookJunkieLI realises that what he wrote is probably not what he meant

Extract a book cover from a format file in Metadata Edit (single or bulk) does not modify the format file.

BR

Well, how did he interpret this?

Both before and after Send To Device or Modify Epub it will show duplicate copies of that image in the book file.

Both before and after... that is what is leaving me in a questioning mood, but I am pretty sure that is deliberate either way.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Both before and after... that is what is leaving me in a questioning mood, but I am pretty sure that is deliberate either way.

I'm not entirely sure what BookJunkieKLI meant to write; but I doubt he meant to imply that Metadata Edit would write to the format file immediately after extracting a a first image - as you said that would be a no no.

I suspect his prolix proclivities got the better of him :lol:

What he wanted to say, I'd wager, is that the 'extract cover feature' will pull the 'first image' if there is no 'cover image' and write that to cover.jpg in the book folder. Then, when a later event, such as polish, modify, send to device etc occurs, that will inject the cover.jpg into the book as 'cover image'. As a result one would have the 'cover image' and the 'first image' in the format file.

BR

[eschwartz]

Perhaps, but it certainly came out as a definitive "calibre will eat your books for lunch if you use this feature".

[theducks]

Originally Posted by dvd8n

Well I'm blowed. I've added over 2000 books to my library and I never knew about that button. I clicked it and it set the cover just fine.

Well then, I guess my question is why doesn't it just do that by default when you open the metadata edit window? Or maybe offer it as an option in the 'download cover' screen?

That feature exists on the Bulk Metadata edit screen (near bottom)
You (at least many folk) do NOT want a cover in the Library being stomped by the one from the book.

BTW Auto_add does pull any metadata and cover (if you do not have read from filename)

[BookJunkieLI]

I meant exactly what I wrote, the only question being if I'm interpreting what I'm seeing when I open Edit Book correctly.

If I select a book that I've used either the brown book icon or the bulk edit option to check for a cover and it has one, then press T for Edit Book, inside I find a cover.xhtml page listed under the text section along with titlepage and file0001, and in the images section there's a cover.jpg and at least one other image file. If I view the book I'll see what was set as the cover at the beginning and then somewhere later in the file, not always the next page, I'll find a duplicate of the cover image.

Then if I click Embed Metadata, I don't have the Modify Epub PI installed on this computer, when I open it up in Edit Book again the cover.xhtml and cover.jpg are still there along with the original copy of the cover image under its original name. And if I view the book I see the image at the beginning and then later in the book where it was originally located.

So unless that first image was already being listed as the original filename and cover.jpg with a cover.xhtml file, in which case why didn't Calibre show that it had a cover image, then it's making the change to the files. Unfortunately I don't know if those files were there before or after I hit the button because I've already run them all through the bulk edit for the cover file but I'm still working on the other metadata. Which is why I know they haven't had the metadata embedded yet. I haven't used Send To Device, Embed Metadata or Modify EPUB on them yet.

[eschwartz]

Edit Book will embed the metadata from the library automatically. There is an option to disable that.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BookJunkieLI

I meant exactly what I wrote, the only question being if I'm interpreting what I'm seeing when I open Edit Book correctly.

If I select a book that I've used either the brown book icon or the bulk edit option to check for a cover and it has one, then press T for Edit Book, inside I find a cover.xhtml page listed under the text section along with titlepage and file0001, and in the images section there's a cover.jpg and at least one other image file. If I view the book I'll see what was set as the cover at the beginning and then somewhere later in the file, not always the next page, I'll find a duplicate of the cover image.

Then if I click Embed Metadata, I don't have the Modify Epub PI installed on this computer, when I open it up in Edit Book again the cover.xhtml and cover.jpg are still there along with the original copy of the cover image under its original name. And if I view the book I see the image at the beginning and then later in the book where it was originally located.

So unless that first image was already being listed as the original filename and cover.jpg with a cover.xhtml file, in which case why didn't Calibre show that it had a cover image, then it's making the change to the files. Unfortunately I don't know if those files were there before or after I hit the button because I've already run them all through the bulk edit for the cover file but I'm still working on the other metadata. Which is why I know they haven't had the metadata embedded yet. I haven't used Send To Device, Embed Metadata or Modify EPUB on them yet.

to be clear about covers in EPUB (what the brown book also uses)
2 things must be met in the content.opf
1) the (coverpage) file must be declared as the 'cover' in the guide section (set using semantics)

2) the Image file used on the cover must have an id='cover' and a media-type="image/,imagetype>"

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BookJunkieLI

I meant exactly what I wrote, the only question being if I'm interpreting what I'm seeing when I open Edit Book correctly.

@BookJunkieLI - aaah, but the post to which I 'reacted' didn't mention Edit Book. I read your post as saying the extracted image was injected back into the book as a cover as a result of clicking the brown cover. With what I know of calibre that didn't ring true, and it didn't make sense that BookJunkieLI would think such a thing

As eschwartz tell us:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Edit Book will embed the metadata from the library automatically. There is an option to disable that.

BTW : The relevant setting is Edit Book->Preferences->Integration with calibre->Update metadata embedded in the book when opening

BR

[dvd8n]

This is the XML from the first file from one of the books:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Horse Under Water</title>
<link href="default.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
</head>
<body>
<p id="cover" class="sercov" style="margin:0;"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover"/></p>
</body>
</html>