Color jetBook Color for comics

[m0rdant]

Still no luck with filling the page even after converting to PDF and choosing fit page on the Jetbook Color menu. Anyone up to posting a step by step from cbz / cbr to pdf for the Jetbook Color?

Thanks

[ProDigit]

what is exactly the issue?
When you save each image as a page in a pdf document (without a border), you will see it in the JBC as an image zoomed to fit screen. If the image is for widescreens it will naturally not fill the whole screen, but touch the screen top and bottom, and you will have a border on the right of the screen.

If the image is low resolution,it will be stretched to fit screen on the inside, meaning either width or height of the picture will touch the screen, which ever fits inside of the screen borders first.

in JBC, just click menu, change zoom, fit page.

[m0rdant]

Got it. I was used to the stretch to fit on my sony where the comic page would fill the whole page (distorted aspect ratio). Just gotta get used to it being off center. Thanks for the feedback!

[ProDigit]

I get what you're saying. In case of high resolution JPG it could make a comic book a bit more readable; But I doubt they will incorporate the feat in the JBC.

If the image is stretched only a little, (say from 16/9 to 16/10 or something), the distortion will not be very noticeable, but it might show that small text will be better viewable.

In case of pure text, stretching the screen actually does not affect text in a negative way, only when text is combined with pictures (like eg comic book) might it be if the stretching becomes noticeable.

I also would have preferred the page to be centered instead of to the left of the screen, it would make more sense.
Perhaps the newest updates fix these issues; or perhaps not.

[Ken Maltby]

SVG graphics are "Scalable" meaning that their size and shape can be manipulated
without degrading the image. Try Googling "svg comic"

http://www.bifter.co.uk
http://www.bifter.co.uk/issues/16.svg

http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/09/svg-comics-ebook.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../14/Mahuri.svg

Luck;
Ken

P.S.; You can use the free Inkscape to view the svg files.
http://inkscape.org/

[ProDigit]

converting a text book to svg might increase the size considerably. Also, I think it'll load slower. I've had readers that showed errors with SVG pictures; but if you ask me it's not a frequently used format for books...

[netboy]

This is my basic workflow for getting manga/comics on my jbc.

Download all your chapters or whatever into a single folder where each chapter is in a separate sub folder.

Zip it up and rename as a cbz or cbr.

Open up comicrack(google it) and export the cbz or cbr to an image folder. This will give you a folder with a crap load of jpegs but they will all be in order.

Use http://www.rw-designer.com/picture-resize to resize the images to 1600x1200

Use JpegtoPdf(google it) to make the pdf. Set Specify page size to 8.5in W 11.25in H and check shrink and enlarge boxes.

This may not be the best way to get comics onto your jbc but it works for me and it fills the entire screen.

I break down my Manga into volumes of 10. So one pdf will be volumes 1-10, next would be 11-20 ect. Works well for me.

[Ken Maltby]

While it would not surprise me to learn that the Public/Government Unionized school
systems had decided to go with Comic "Text" Books, my references and comments
were to actual "Comics"/Graphic Novels.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVC) can include capabilities that Raster/BitMap formats
do not support. The simple graphic image display in SVG format is, for all practical
purposes, no more demanding than the other formats, given the same level of
hardware support/acceleration. The JBC's SoC (Freescale i.MX508) has hardware
support for SVC. If you have been accessing svg files in general, it is likely that
many of them were made to demonstrate the added features of the format and
do not represent the performance or filesize of a simple scalable comic page.

SVG is used more and more as the Web adopts standards that support it. It is a
natural for e-books just as is HTML with CSS. (Unzip a .epub file and take a look)

Luck;
Ken

[ProDigit]

a cbr/cbz file is basically a zip/rar'ed folder of jpegs.
You could just extract them with winzip/winrar/7z.

With the march update your only solution is to unpack the files in a directory, and read it from there.
Renaming them to epub, zip, rar, cbr or cbz won't work.

Unpacking them shows them still in order of filename (which is the same order as how the files appear within the epub).

I've only discovered a rather nasty bug in the march update (v1128), where most jpegs don't display, and if they do, they're scrambled.
I don't know if perhaps the image resolution is to blame, or the encoding method, but some jpegs extracted from some comic books don't display nice at all!

[m0rdant]

Originally Posted by netboy

This is my basic workflow for getting manga/comics on my jbc.

Download all your chapters or whatever into a single folder where each chapter is in a separate sub folder.

Zip it up and rename as a cbz or cbr.

Open up comicrack(google it) and export the cbz or cbr to an image folder. This will give you a folder with a crap load of jpegs but they will all be in order.

Use http://www.rw-designer.com/picture-resize to resize the images to 1600x1200

Use JpegtoPdf(google it) to make the pdf. Set Specify page size to 8.5in W 11.25in H and check shrink and enlarge boxes.

This may not be the best way to get comics onto your jbc but it works for me and it fills the entire screen.

I break down my Manga into volumes of 10. So one pdf will be volumes 1-10, next would be 11-20 ect. Works well for me.

Thanks, I'm going to give this method a shot and see. All the feedback on comic conversion is appreciated!

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

SVG is used more and more as the Web adopts standards that support it. It is a natural for e-books just as is HTML with CSS. (Unzip a .epub file and take a look)

The source of the images would have to be some type of vector data for it to be converted to SVG, wouldn't it? In this case, the originals are all raster data (images got by scanning). Is there any advantage to using SVG to display them (if it's even possible)? Or is all this talk of SVG more about what the comics industry should be using for new productions rather than how to convert existing bundles of scans?

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by rkomar

The source of the images would have to be some type of vector data for it to be converted to SVG, wouldn't it? In this case, the originals are all raster data (images got by scanning). Is there any advantage to using SVG to display them (if it's even possible)? Or is all this talk of SVG more about what the comics industry should be using for new productions rather than how to convert existing bundles of scans?

The few conversion efforts that I've seen using Inkscape, have not been
that promising. The real advantage for the use of vector graphics comes
in their digital computational nature. Manipulating their size and shape is
very easy and without loss of image data. This has obvious advantages for
display on devices of different size and technologies.

There are other advantages for the production of "comics" and frame by
frame animation. The individual components of an image can be manipulated
easily.

I would guess that existing scans of such artwork could be made more
manipulatable by conversion of each scan as an individual object, but they
would have none of the other benefits of an SVG image composed of a
number of objects.

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Tools

Luck;
Ken

[ProDigit]

There is a tool called "Comic book archive to EPUB converter". Never tried it, but it looks like it's just organizing the pages, with a simple script write a basic html that displays each image as a page, and stuff that into an epub archive.

Anyone with up to date experience please let us know!

[netboy]

I just quickly tried it out. I couldn't get the image size to fit correctly to the Jbc. It was always overscanned. The resolution was horrible too.
I am going to stick my tedious workflow I posted above. Seems to be the best thing so far as I can tell.

[ProDigit]

Ow, it re-compresses the image?
Pity!

Really the best way is to manually extract all pictures from the epub, and use ePubPack to pack them in an epub. All you have to do is probably make sure the pictures are in the right filename order, and perhaps create one html .. I'm not too familiar with creating epubs, as I stopped that practice somewhere halfway before I created the first epub.