Just verifying lack of options... And other questions - Page 3

eschwartz · 08-12-2015, 05:11 PM

I would simply import them from the Kindle into calibre, no need to redownload.

Deleting them from the Kindle before resending is advised if the filename will change, or if you are sending a legacy mobi7 book -- the Content Catalog can get confused about what books you have, and esp. play havoc with collections.
a/k/a sez Kindle: Why the #$%^& are there two different books with the same unique ID?

As long as a book was not converted, it retains the exth 113 (ASIN) field which the Kindle uses to manage collections.

calibre cannot modify the metadata on a dual-MOBI -- but I doubt that's what Amazon is sending you!

Sorry, all my books get sent with the title properly fixed.

Note: DeDRM is not required, calibre can track and change the metadata on a DRMed book. However, DeDRM doesn't actually cost anything.

badgoodDeb · 08-12-2015, 05:32 PM

What's a dual-MOBI? The books that didn't change came from BAEN, not Amazon! They were multi-books in one volume, where the volume had a name, and I was assigning it a position (2, 4, 6, 8) in the series according to where the inner contents started.

Re: importing from the Kindle -- do you mean I don't have to muck with deDRMing? Can Calibre re-title a book and leave the DRM intact? Or can it just figure out the DRM that is correct for the Kindle? (I know it is different per device, which is why it's a headache.) I also know we can't talk about it. (much?) (is this sort of meta discussion?)

eschwartz · 08-12-2015, 05:51 PM

As we are not discussing DeDRM so much as we are discussing the generics of the mobipocket database, it is fine to discuss it here.

If you like, you can see the gory details in our Wiki: MOBI
The simple version is that the metadata calibre changes is in the exth headers.
DRM only seals the text blocks (it doesn't even encrypt the images), which is why calibre can extract metadata even from a DRMed book. Once you (try to) convert it, suddenly you realize it is DRMed!

As for Baen, they *might* be using calibre to deliver dual-MOBI (a *.mobi with moth mobi7 and KF8 content, for gracefully falling back on devices that don't support AZW3).
Either way, convert it with calibre, and whatever the problem is will probably be fixed.

Personally, I would use the EpubSplit plugin to divide those omnibuses into individual books.

badgoodDeb · 08-12-2015, 05:56 PM

Oh, the Baen content was from 2010. Was AZW3 stuff around back then?

Thanks for the "sealed text blocks" bit. Whee! It sounds like I can Calibre my titles without mucking with DRM at *all*, and that would make me really happy! (It doesn't get my books backed up, and that should make my uber-backup personality unhappy, but it doesn't.) Thank you!

badgoodDeb · 08-12-2015, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I would simply import them from the Kindle into calibre, no need to redownload.

Deleting them from the Kindle before resending is advised if the filename will change,

Well, for this "add series & number" then I guess I *am* changing the title, so I'd better delete the book. [Or am I confusing "title" and "filename"? Cuz I've already confused "download" (from Amazon) with "sideload" to Calibre.]

Calibre's import doesn't have a means to delete, does it? I gather I have to disconnect the Kindle, and delete the books by hand, before pushing them back over?

eschwartz · 08-12-2015, 06:16 PM

Title is a metadata field. Filename is what you see in Windows Explorer.

filename: "The Annihilation Score -- Stross, Charles.azw3"
title: "The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, Book 6)"
author: "Charles Stross"

I've resent books from calibre, overwriting the previous copy. (I use a send template based on the original filename from Amazon, for consistency's sake.) Done like that, the Content Catalog does not get confused. Mere metadata changes get picked up.
The Catalog uses filename and ASIN to keep track of books -- you need to let the Kindle notice a book is deleted, before resending it with the same ASIN but a different filename.

And yet, all the time I slip up and resend a MOBI. The original DRMed *.azw file is still there, and gets replaced by a *.mobi -- confuses the hell out of the Kindle. Either you have two books with the same ID, or you deleted the *.azw and the Kindle didn't notice, which turns the book into a sort-of-ghost.

From calibre, select books, press "delete key", at prompt, select "delete from device".
Do NOT select "delete from library" or "delete from library and device"!

badgoodDeb · 08-12-2015, 06:39 PM

Ooo, many thanks!!

The title-won't-change books did get mailed to Amazon, so that they are in my Doc library and other kindles on my account (in other locales) can find them. Now I am deleting them from my main kindle and pushing them back over via side-loading. THAT might produce a different filename (if amazon renamed my .mobi files something else before sending them down over the air to my kindle?). Anyway. I'm content with fixing the titles on SOME books, and making life easier in some cases.

dordale · 08-12-2015, 07:01 PM

Never mind--noticed that eschwartz provided the answer--with a much better explanation than me. :-)

eschwartz · 08-12-2015, 07:17 PM

badgoodDeb -- If you're mailing them to your Kindle, you can mail them directly from calibre, and use a plugboard for the title. Double win.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dordale

Never mind--noticed that eschwartz provided the answer--with a much better explanation than me. :-)

Why do you think they pay me the big bucks around here?

badgoodDeb · 08-12-2015, 08:36 PM

Well, now that I *know* about the nifty title plugboard, yeah! At least, once I get the configuration for my email set up to work right. I have my own domain name, through Yahoo small business services, and it's always a chore to get the settings right ..... The first test this afternoon didn't seem to work. But I didn't get a FAIL message bounce back in email either --- maybe it did work -- gotta go home & connect to the home wifi and see. The kindle isn't set up for the work wifi, which is doubly and triply complicating matters!

Josieb1 · 08-13-2015, 04:28 AM

I also edit metadata as soon as books are loaded into Calibre. I edit author, title etc and add series info. I don't use plug boards as I email the most important books I want to read to my Amazon cloud but I do keep both mobi and ePub format of my books in Calibre and my library resides on Dropbox with three laptops pointing to the same library. I use tags extensively that's how I keep my books organised. And hubby's as I manage all the books myself. He won't do anything in Calibre other than enquire

HarryT · 08-13-2015, 04:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

What's a dual-MOBI? The books that didn't change came from BAEN, not Amazon! They were multi-books in one volume, where the volume had a name, and I was assigning it a position (2, 4, 6, 8) in the series according to where the inner contents started.

Baen's Mobi books are in the "dual Mobi" format, which plugboards don't work for. That's why, when I buy books from Baen, I always download the ePub version of the book, and then convert that to AZW3, for which plugboards work fine.

HarryT · 08-13-2015, 04:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

As for Baen, they *might* be using calibre to deliver dual-MOBI (a *.mobi with moth mobi7 and KF8 content, for gracefully falling back on devices that don't support AZW3).

Baen do indeed use dual Mobi and have done so for some years.

eschwartz · 08-13-2015, 09:47 AM

Interesting, I hadn't noticed.

FWIW, KindleUnpack will also split these into separate MOBI and AZW3 components, but converting from the EPUB version obviously works too

and is less bother.

badgoodDeb · 08-13-2015, 12:54 PM

Another note for the un-initiated: don't do the title prefix on Calibre on one computer, then go home and have a different Calibre import the book from the kindle again, to populate the database on that second Calibre. The book title will now have the prefix already IN the title. Not as pretty. Since I had relatively few, I spent some time fixing it up, and making the Calibre database pretty again.

Except that the files at OS level on the mac are now forever named with the prefix format, rather than the correct title. I thought of deleting the whole library, and repulling from the kindle, but won't they STILL have the prefix in the title? I saw an option to save as something else, at file level, but is it even uglier? ASIN or somesuch?

And also except that I DID wind up having to wipe the Kindle back to factory newness, and sending everything back over from Calibre (that worked nicely) because I hadn't deleted books first. I assumed that since I was only changing meta data, and not filename on the Kindle, I would be okay. Nope. I got double instances, and couldn't delete things, and ghost books. Lotsa ugly. But since it was all sideloaded safely to Calibre (and, in truth, all came from Amazon, or somewhere whence I knew of) I reset the Voyage and lost nothing but the file dates. [ In short, I had fun playing around. At 1am. ]

But now that the Voyage is back to OK (after the factory reset), I *could* delete the Calibre library, and re-import from the kindle, if there is a way to get prettier OS-level filenames. ??

08-12-2015, 06:16 PM	#36
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	Title is a metadata field. Filename is what you see in Windows Explorer. filename: "The Annihilation Score -- Stross, Charles.azw3" title: "The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files, Book 6)" author: "Charles Stross" I've resent books from calibre, overwriting the previous copy. (I use a send template based on the original filename from Amazon, for consistency's sake.) Done like that, the Content Catalog does not get confused. Mere metadata changes get picked up. The Catalog uses filename and ASIN to keep track of books -- you need to let the Kindle notice a book is deleted, before resending it with the same ASIN but a different filename. And yet, all the time I slip up and resend a MOBI. The original DRMed .azw file is still there, and gets replaced by a .mobi -- confuses the hell out of the Kindle. Either you have two books with the same ID, or you deleted the .azw and the Kindle didn't notice, which turns the book into a sort-of-ghost. From calibre, select books, press "delete key", at prompt, select "delete from device". Do NOT select "delete from library" or "delete from library and device"! Last edited by eschwartz; 08-12-2015 at 06:22 PM.*

08-13-2015, 12:54 PM	#45
badgoodDeb Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,542 Karma: 64201357 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Harrisburg outskirts Device: Palms, K1-4s, iPads, iPhones, KV, KO1	Another note for the un-initiated: don't do the title prefix on Calibre on one computer, then go home and have a different Calibre import the book from the kindle again, to populate the database on that second Calibre. The book title will now have the prefix already IN the title. Not as pretty. Since I had relatively few, I spent some time fixing it up, and making the Calibre database pretty again. Except that the files at OS level on the mac are now forever named with the prefix format, rather than the correct title. I thought of deleting the whole library, and repulling from the kindle, but won't they STILL have the prefix in the title? I saw an option to save as something else, at file level, but is it even uglier? ASIN or somesuch? And also except that I DID wind up having to wipe the Kindle back to factory newness, and sending everything back over from Calibre (that worked nicely) because I hadn't deleted books first. I assumed that since I was only changing meta data, and not filename on the Kindle, I would be okay. Nope. I got double instances, and couldn't delete things, and ghost books. Lotsa ugly. But since it was all sideloaded safely to Calibre (and, in truth, all came from Amazon, or somewhere whence I knew of) I reset the Voyage and lost nothing but the file dates. [ In short, I had fun playing around. At 1am. ] But now that the Voyage is back to OK (after the factory reset), I could delete the Calibre library, and re-import from the kindle, if there is a way to get prettier OS-level filenames. ?? Last edited by badgoodDeb; 08-13-2015 at 01:01 PM.

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08-12-2015, 05:11 PM	#31
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	I would simply import them from the Kindle into calibre, no need to redownload. Deleting them from the Kindle before resending is advised if the filename will change, or if you are sending a legacy mobi7 book -- the Content Catalog can get confused about what books you have, and esp. play havoc with collections. a/k/a sez Kindle: Why the #$%^& are there two different books with the same unique ID? As long as a book was not converted, it retains the exth 113 (ASIN) field which the Kindle uses to manage collections. calibre cannot modify the metadata on a dual-MOBI -- but I doubt that's what Amazon is sending you! Sorry, all my books get sent with the title properly fixed. Note: DeDRM is not required, calibre can track and change the metadata on a DRMed book. However, DeDRM doesn't actually cost anything.

08-12-2015, 05:32 PM	#32
badgoodDeb Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,542 Karma: 64201357 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Harrisburg outskirts Device: Palms, K1-4s, iPads, iPhones, KV, KO1	What's a dual-MOBI? The books that didn't change came from BAEN, not Amazon! They were multi-books in one volume, where the volume had a name, and I was assigning it a position (2, 4, 6, 8) in the series according to where the inner contents started. Re: importing from the Kindle -- do you mean I don't have to muck with deDRMing? Can Calibre re-title a book and leave the DRM intact? Or can it just figure out the DRM that is correct for the Kindle? (I know it is different per device, which is why it's a headache.) I also know we can't talk about it. (much?) (is this sort of meta discussion?)

08-12-2015, 05:51 PM	#33
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	As we are not discussing DeDRM so much as we are discussing the generics of the mobipocket database, it is fine to discuss it here. If you like, you can see the gory details in our Wiki: MOBI The simple version is that the metadata calibre changes is in the exth headers. DRM only seals the text blocks (it doesn't even encrypt the images), which is why calibre can extract metadata even from a DRMed book. Once you (try to) convert it, suddenly you realize it is DRMed! As for Baen, they might be using calibre to deliver dual-MOBI (a *.mobi with moth mobi7 and KF8 content, for gracefully falling back on devices that don't support AZW3). Either way, convert it with calibre, and whatever the problem is will probably be fixed. Personally, I would use the EpubSplit plugin to divide those omnibuses into individual books.

08-12-2015, 05:56 PM	#34
badgoodDeb Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,542 Karma: 64201357 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Harrisburg outskirts Device: Palms, K1-4s, iPads, iPhones, KV, KO1	Oh, the Baen content was from 2010. Was AZW3 stuff around back then? Thanks for the "sealed text blocks" bit. Whee! It sounds like I can Calibre my titles without mucking with DRM at all, and that would make me really happy! (It doesn't get my books backed up, and that should make my uber-backup personality unhappy, but it doesn't.) Thank you!

08-12-2015, 06:39 PM	#37
badgoodDeb Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,542 Karma: 64201357 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Harrisburg outskirts Device: Palms, K1-4s, iPads, iPhones, KV, KO1	Ooo, many thanks!! The title-won't-change books did get mailed to Amazon, so that they are in my Doc library and other kindles on my account (in other locales) can find them. Now I am deleting them from my main kindle and pushing them back over via side-loading. THAT might produce a different filename (if amazon renamed my .mobi files something else before sending them down over the air to my kindle?). Anyway. I'm content with fixing the titles on SOME books, and making life easier in some cases.

08-12-2015, 07:01 PM	#38
dordale Wizard Posts: 1,731 Karma: 3472866 Join Date: Apr 2008 Device: Sony PRS-650 & 350; Kindle Voyage; Kobo Aura HD, Aura One, and Forma	Never mind--noticed that eschwartz provided the answer--with a much better explanation than me. :-)

08-12-2015, 08:36 PM	#40
badgoodDeb Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,542 Karma: 64201357 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Harrisburg outskirts Device: Palms, K1-4s, iPads, iPhones, KV, KO1	Well, now that I know about the nifty title plugboard, yeah! At least, once I get the configuration for my email set up to work right. I have my own domain name, through Yahoo small business services, and it's always a chore to get the settings right ..... The first test this afternoon didn't seem to work. But I didn't get a FAIL message bounce back in email either --- maybe it did work -- gotta go home & connect to the home wifi and see. The kindle isn't set up for the work wifi, which is doubly and triply complicating matters!

08-13-2015, 04:28 AM	#41
Josieb1 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,082 Karma: 18051062 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: UK Device: Kindle Scribe, Coloursoft, PW SE, Kindle 6, Kobo Libra Colour, Libra 2	I also edit metadata as soon as books are loaded into Calibre. I edit author, title etc and add series info. I don't use plug boards as I email the most important books I want to read to my Amazon cloud but I do keep both mobi and ePub format of my books in Calibre and my library resides on Dropbox with three laptops pointing to the same library. I use tags extensively that's how I keep my books organised. And hubby's as I manage all the books myself. He won't do anything in Calibre other than enquire

08-13-2015, 09:47 AM	#44
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	Interesting, I hadn't noticed. FWIW, KindleUnpack will also split these into separate MOBI and AZW3 components, but converting from the EPUB version obviously works too and is less bother.

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