DRM workaround: Kindle for Android

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Kindles are pretty robust. I created a 400+mb KFX comic out of a 1000 page PDF, and it displays faster than the PDF renderer on my Oasis3. It is more stable than the KFX print replica renderer that would crash every 10-15 pages. The comic and PDF never crashed.

I've heard some decent things about the Kindle renderer, but the ecosystem lockin and sideload hassle...

If you want to try the layered PDFs, here's an amazingly bulky one. (I have a physical copy of it, I think inherited from a grandparent, and it's a doorstopper!)

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I've heard some decent things about the Kindle renderer, but the ecosystem lockin and sideload hassle...

If you want to try the layered PDFs, here's an amazingly bulky one. (I have a physical copy of it, I think inherited from a grandparent, and it's a doorstopper!)

Now, that is most horrible. It takes 10 to 20 seconds to get a page displayed on my Kindle. That would be a perfect candidate to turn into a comic, even if it means losing the text layer and increasing file size. I also see a lot of inverted pages that the web viewer does not show. Maybe it is in the PDF or maybe it is the Kindle doing it wrong.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Tried the clone and update K4A and added the AZW6 Image Merge plugin to calibre and I ended up with a 2400x3667 pixel cover image though the other 32 images stayed the same size.

There's one thing I don't understand - why would you want high-resolution images on an e.g. Kobo?
In Calibre I remove all the images that are unnecessary for the book and compress the rest to 20% - I set the cover to 600x800.
This way my books are approx 1 KB/page.
I hardly look at the pictures anyway.

Sorry, I didn't think of Comix in my post; but I'll look at them on a color tablet - and if from Amazon, in the Kindle app.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

There's one thing I don't understand - why would you want high-resolution images on an e.g. Kobo?
In Calibre I remove all the images that are unnecessary for the book and compress the rest to 20% - I set the cover to 600x800.
This way my books are approx 1 KB/page.
I hardly look at the pictures anyway.

Sorry, I didn't think of Comix in my post; but I'll look at them on a color tablet - and if from Amazon, in the Kindle app.

It is an option if you want it. If you don't want it, you can always skip the AZW6 container. You can even have both versions: copy the .prc file to a different folder, convert to EPUB for use in ereaders, delete AZW3 format, import again from where the .ast file is, keep the high res AZW3 as master for future use. You never know what kind of device there will be in 5 or 10 years.

[ownedbycats]

I like looking at the images in full resolution on my computer monitor.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

You can even have both versions: copy the .prc file to a different folder, convert to EPUB for use in ereaders, delete AZW3 format, import again from where the .ast file is, keep the high res AZW3 as master for future use.

You can also disable and enable the AZW6 plugin via preferences in calibre to control how books are imported.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by jhowell

You can also disable and enable the AZW6 plugin via preferences in calibre to control how books are imported.

Instead of on/off a really useful setting would be to turn off the high res mode - and keep the eink mode engaged always. That could easily be done, even by me, without much coding to split the plugin into two plugins - one for eink only, and one for K4PC/K4A. I could probably motivate myself to learn real quick how to add customizations to plugins that you can throw on the toolbar. Unless a toggle switch for a plugin to turn on/off already exists without having to go into settings?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

There's one thing I don't understand - why would you want high-resolution images on an e.g. Kobo?
In Calibre I remove all the images that are unnecessary for the book and compress the rest to 20% - I set the cover to 600x800.
This way my books are approx 1 KB/page.
I hardly look at the pictures anyway.

Sorry, I didn't think of Comix in my post; but I'll look at them on a color tablet - and if from Amazon, in the Kindle app.

For me, it was more out of curiosity as to what the K4A/AZW6 path offered. Since most of my ebooks don't have hi-resolution images and the few that do I tend to save as kepub so I can zoom images, I'm not that concerned about image quality.

I did find that I had to set the maximum-cover-size in calibre's tweaks to allow for larger cover images though, perhaps, 5,000 by 8,000 was going a bit too far.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

There's one thing I don't understand - why would you want high-resolution images on an e.g. Kobo?

Can kobos zoom images?

Sometimes full screen maps show a good overview, but fine details can not be discerned and text can't be read. High resolution maps make zoom and pan worthwhile. This works nicely on kindles.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Can kobos zoom images?

Sometimes full screen maps show a good overview, but fine details can not be discerned and text can't be read. High resolution maps make zoom and pan worthwhile. This works nicely on kindles.

Yes, at least for kepub. About 90% of the time I invoke it accidentally when trying to get a cat hair off the screen.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Can kobos zoom images?

Sometimes full screen maps show a good overview, but fine details can not be discerned and text can't be read. High resolution maps make zoom and pan worthwhile. This works nicely on kindles.

It depends. Kobo ereaders have two renderers. One is Adobe's RMSDK version of ADE which makes supporting Adobe's ADEPT DRM simple. The other is a webkit based renderer which has pretty decent epub3 support and does allow for zooming images. However, it does come with it's own oddities. That is why you see references to epub and kepub since the choice of the renderer is done on the file name extension with filename.epub using RMSDK and filename.kepub.epub using the webkit based renderer. A third option is .fxl.kepub.epub to force rendering a fixed layout ePub3 ebook using the webkit based renderer.

[sherman]

This seems to no longer be working on my old Galaxy S7 (With LineageOS). It was working a couple of days ago

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by sherman

This seems to no longer be working on my old Galaxy S7 (With LineageOS). It was working a couple of days ago

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

- I suspect Amazon may be monitoring MobileRead. If this method gets blocked, I'll know for sure.

- There's been several reports of this method failing on physical devices and the app demanding an upgrade to download. It continues to work on Bluestacks for now, so try that.

Just tested, 4.16.0.75. on Bluestacks running 32-bit Nougat still working for me.

[sherman]

Yeah, I just installed BlueStacks. Working still. (but for how long I wonder...)

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by sherman

Yeah, I just installed BlueStacks. Working still. (but for how long I wonder...)

Precisely as long until it doesn't.