Audio or Video files into an eBook using calibre

[eschwartz]

What I don't get is, why do people try defining EPUB as a format for a device (E-ink), rather than a format for a use (book of text)?

Tablet users read plain ole' books too... what need for a special new format for textual ebooks on tablets vs. textual ebooks on E-ink devices?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

What I don't get is, why do people try defining EPUB as a format for a device (E-ink), rather than a format for a use (book of text)?

Tablet users read plain ole' books too... what need for a special new format for textual ebooks on tablets vs. textual ebooks on E-ink devices?

A well formed EPUB2 should work on most devices.

Designing FOR e-ink just takes into considerations of the limitations of color (8 or 16 shades of grey), screen size/DPI

My issue is demanding High resolution Color, Motion and Audio in a BOOK.

I agree, some books come in Hi Res Color (most live on the coffee table under the cat ) In those cases, PDF and my tablet are King, but most novels I read only have Color on the cover.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by theducks

My issue is demanding High resolution Color, Motion and Audio in a BOOK.

Just blame Apple.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Just blame Apple.

Ain't that the truth

[BetterRed]

EPUB3 is gaining traction in education, in particular for teaching children with autism and other disabilities. AFAIK Apple has very little to do with the development of such material.

Dismissing multi-media teaching material is reminiscent of earlier objections to the printing press, and I can't help but think of the medieval attitudes of certain groups towards education for the masses, even today.

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

EPUB3 is gaining traction in education, in particular for teaching children with autism and other disabilities. AFAIK Apple has very little to do with the development of such material.

Dismissing multi-media teaching material is reminiscent of earlier objections to the printing press, and I can't help but think of the medieval attitudes of certain groups towards education for the masses, even today.

BR

There is nothing wrong with that. EPUB3 for education is an amazing thing, and I wish it had been around for me in elementary school.

It is just I seem to remember that the IDPF spent way too much time pandering to Apple's interest in the next extra-flashy thing instead of introducing standards of greater use to digital publishing in general. Like clarifying the current free-for-all of standards.

The fact that educational materials including methods for teaching autistic children (something I in particular have great sympathy for) is the only good thing that has come of it. And that wasn't particularly their goal, was it -- so they (IDPF) don't get any goodwill from me for doing good by accident.

At the end of the day, it is indisputable that most ebooks do not need video or audio. They should focus on standardizing the so-called standards first.
The IDPF is not an institution for advancing the art of digital publishing for education, they are an institution for advancing the art of digital publishing in general; as such, their job is to focus on what serves the greatest utility.
I can appreciate the gains for educational purposes while still thinking the IDPF has become distracted from their purpose.

[BetterRed]

All standards are influenced by vendors, browse the IETF RFC's -- eg were not for IBM and Cisco BGP would not have come into being. I collaborated in writing a couple of early draft RTF's with engineers from BT, Wellfleet and IBM, at the time I was working for a large bank that was an early adopter of tunnelling TCP/IP through large SNA networks over ATM circuits. Do you think we weren't each looking after our own interests.

I can't see Amazon, Newscorp, or Elsevier in the Membership list - but I do see Apple, Google, Adobe, Hatchette, Springer & Microsoft. Who's not in the list is just as revealing as who is.

I don't have any insight into the workings of the IDPF, but maybe this is another instance of Mrs. Thatcher's TINA theorem

BR

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

So, we have fragmentation for the sake of fragmentation. Oh well.

This is not what I meant.

Otherwise, your world would have been made of a single object that does everything for you: cooks, makes coffee, play music, videos and books, help you with transportation, runs games onto, work the land (agriculture), catches the fish, hunts the bears, goes to Mars and back, and so on.

That several products exists, is a strong indication that diversity is needed. Also that a format that fits one particular object doesn't fit another as perfect as the first.

Taking an eReader for example, it can display statically a text or image, and re-paginates (reflow) a text made to flow. It doesn't require a backlit (like computers, tablets or smartphones do) but it's slow. So long lasting, no backlit, but slow. On the other hand, smartphones and smarttabs are small enough to have a good overview of a concept - scrolling and/or small prints are often required (zoom in - zoom out - drag -click) - both a nuisance for older people and/or aged view. Computers are fine for everything except that they are big (even laptops) and need energy (low mobility). Tablets may be the golden cut, but not they are free from disadvantages (cannot be read at the beach).

And finally, if a single format would be the goal, why there are photos different from text?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

This is not what I meant.

Otherwise, your world would have been made of a single object that does everything for you: cooks, makes coffee, play music, videos and books, help you with transportation, runs games onto, work the land (agriculture), catches the fish, hunts the bears, goes to Mars and back, and so on.

Otherwise known as a spouse

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

This is not what I meant.

Otherwise, your world would have been made of a single object that does everything for you: cooks, makes coffee, play music, videos and books, help you with transportation, runs games onto, work the land (agriculture), catches the fish, hunts the bears, goes to Mars and back, and so on.

That several products exists, is a strong indication that diversity is needed. Also that a format that fits one particular object doesn't fit another as perfect as the first.

Taking an eReader for example, it can display statically a text or image, and re-paginates (reflow) a text made to flow. It doesn't require a backlit (like computers, tablets or smartphones do) but it's slow. So long lasting, no backlit, but slow. On the other hand, smartphones and smarttabs are small enough to have a good overview of a concept - scrolling and/or small prints are often required (zoom in - zoom out - drag -click) - both a nuisance for older people and/or aged view. Computers are fine for everything except that they are big (even laptops) and need energy (low mobility). Tablets may be the golden cut, but not they are free from disadvantages (cannot be read at the beach).

And finally, if a single format would be the goal, why there are photos different from text?

An excellent analysis of why there is fragmentation in hardware, and that it is a good thing. I am still waiting for an explanation of why multiple formats of textual+images ebooks are needed, though.

Yes, images are a different format than text. This was a decision made AFTER the amazing discovery that text doesn't do images well.

I am waiting for an explanation of how the EPUB2 standard is lacking the features for displaying text ebooks on both e-ink and LCD hardwares.
Rendering speed is a quality of the device hardware, not part of the nature of the text/html mimetype and the ZIP compression standard.

[Ghitulescu]

I said text and images are already featured in ePubs (and other eBooks).

Videos are however difficult to display on a slow display as eInk. Audio support in eReaders has been dropped since long. Concerning the latter I thought that Sony which also manufactures MP3-players would have seen it as a market split, but this move occurred to Kindle as well and probably all others.

While it's true that ePubs could be used on a variety of devices with bonus features, why amend them the ePubs to de usable only on those devices but not on these originally developed? Wouldn't be better to use a native format for those feature-enhanced devices? When it was the last time when you opened a paper book and saw a video in it? Leave alone Harry Potter, this is pure fantasy

I mean (again) if such an enhanced device can read HTML (to give an example) and HTML allows for videos and music/audio embedding (like internet does), why not use this format - in the end ePub is based on (stricter) HTML, so no conversion loss can be assessed.

I would however agree with you, if the content and/or format conversion had to be lossy (like those portables that play MP3 but not the original CD WAV format), I would also be supporting this opinion. But as long as an alternative format, better suited for a particular device exists, why not taking advantages of its strengths instead of butchering a stable format, which seems to be, from this vantage point, insufficient.

[eschwartz]

Because EPUB merely means to zip the HTML files and assorted resources into a single self-contained package with a manifest. By all means, let's create a similar but extended, separate format... like EPUB3.

The only change I would make is perhaps to use a new .epub3 file extension or something. And by the time EPUB3 is popular enough to supplant EPUB2, we will have color e-ink fast enough to play videos, and the Galaxy Sx and iPhone will use these screens.

[Ghitulescu]

Epub3 specs are available, although I gather not definitive.
It lets the author do a lot of things (most of them useless IMHO) and relaxes the syntax - which would create huge problems to the hardware developers (not computer, they can always ask for another 16GB RAM or 23GHz trillion-core processors - but small devices have a limited HW).

I dare to recall the java experience. Java is a sort of C++, but without strict syntax and stuff. A heaven for lazy programmers, that don't need to care about memory, heap, stacks and so on - the system does them for him. No wonder everyone could program in java, and the result was sloooow, inefficient and memory-hungry programs, that crashed much often than their pendants, written by real programmers in real languages. And it's not even portable, many modifications must be made to port an alleged portable software from Linux to Windows, or vice versa (the things got a bit better today, as there were written cross-libraries, yet another layer).

Look at the internet today. Nothing can work if javascript is disabled. Flash applets and other complicated stuff make possible to navigate within 3 pages of the site . The internet page weights now a median of 1MB, with all javascripts and flash up to 10MB. When all these could have been done in less than 10kB pure HTML. So if one has a free quota of 300MB then pay for each MB (and surfs at reduced speed ie modem-speeds) he'd understand this "better". 1kB useful information, 9999kB ballast.

My advice would be always, keep it simple.