Pdf, calibre and metadata

[NillaGoon]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Calibre doesn't automatically update the metadata in any format within its library. The metadata in calibre is stored in the database (metadata.db).

That seems to be true. How interesting...

Well, that at least explains why books with fixed-up cover images require a Convert step before being dragged from Calibre to the new OS X iBooks app. Otherwise, iBooks just receives the original, unaltered book.

There must be a specific operation that propagates metadata from Calibre to the underlying book format on export or Send to Device. I assume this operation is entirely separate from Convert since it's significantly faster.

Is that operation available anywhere in the UI (with Calibre's own library copy of the book as the implicit destination)? I'd love to be able to invoke it explicitly since it's potentially less disruptive than Convert and it apparently works for PDF files as well.

[Edit: Evidently this is pretty close to Polish with only the metadata and cover information turned on. But Polish supports only EPUB and AZW3, whereas the various exports seem to handle PDF files as well.]

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by NillaGoon

Is that operation available anywhere in the UI (with Calibre's own library copy of the book as the implicit destination)? I'd love to be able to invoke it explicitly since it's potentially less disruptive than Convert and it apparently works for PDF files as well.

Calibre has the 'Polish Books' option for ePub and Kindle formats. For ePub books there is also the Modify ePub plugin.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by NillaGoon

I'd love to be able to invoke it explicitly since it's potentially less disruptive than Convert and it apparently works for PDF files as well.

I use the catalog feature to create a csv for the pdfs whose metadata I want to update. I munge the csv via a text editor to create exiftool commands to update the pdf metadata - as I want it updated. The pdf files I update are the ones in the calibre library folders.

The only PDF metadata fields that calibre has ever updated for me when I did a save to disk was Author and Title. But it only did it on some books. As far as I can tell, whether it did or not, had nothing to do with the pdf being secured or protected. I didn't delve too deep because I wanted more than Author and Title.

I'm familiar with exiftool for manipulating embedded image metadata so using it to do the same for PDF's was a no-brainer for me.

There is also the ebook-meta cli program that can inject and extract metadata into and from ebooks. I haven't used it but I would assume its the same code as the GUI uses when it does a save to disk.

BR