Forma Trouble with cbz files

[Cybermancer]

Hi there, I recently bought the Kobo Forma so I could save space from manga/comics. I've been trying to import a .cbz file from Calibre to my Forma and there doesn't seem to be any errors until I eject the Forma.

It will show a loading screen that reads "importing content", it will jump to 6% and then it seems to crash and go to the home screen. When I try to find the manga in my library it isn't there, only my one .epub book I imported to see if the problem was with importing. I've tried deleting and re-importing the file multiple times to no avail.

The manga reads fine on ComicRack, so I'm kinda stumped. Do I need to have Adobe Digital Editions authorized? I read somewhere that .cbz files open with ADE.

Thanks for the help!

[codychan]

First of all, you have to make sure whether it is the problem of the cbz file, and have you tried other cbz files on forma?

[Cybermancer]

Yes, I have tried other .cbz files, no luck. Kobo eReaders should be able to display .cbz files, no? It states so on their website.

[codychan]

I read a lot of cbz files on Kobo Foram/Kobo Aura One, so far so good.

And there is something you should know about cbz file, when you rename cbz to zip file and open it using your archive file manager, it should only contain the images files, and they should not be put into a directory and zip the directory.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by codychan

I read a lot of cbz files on Kobo Foram/Kobo Aura One, so far so good.

And there is something you should know about cbz file, when you rename cbz to zip file and open it using your archive file manager, it should only contain the images files, and they should not be put into a directory and zip the directory.

That isn't the case here. And in fact, I remember reporting a bug to Kobo related to subdirectories. It was fixed a long time ago. Testing it now, having one level of subdirectories in a CBZ works.

Extra files should be OK as well. Or, at least the "Thumbs.db" in on of the CBZ files isn't breaking anything.

But, there could be a problem with the file names. Calibre will make sure the archive file name is OK for the device. But, it won't touch the internal file names. If these have unsafe characters in them, they might cause problems.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Cybermancer

Yes, I have tried other .cbz files, no luck. Kobo eReaders should be able to display .cbz files, no? It states so on their website.

Yes, Kobo devices support both CBZ and CBR files. I don't read comics, but, I have tested them frequently to check what is happening with them. I haven't seen any issues for a while.

As mentioned above, there could be an issue with the names of the images inside the CBZ file. There are some characters that might cause problems.

One problem is that when a file breaks the import, it will prevent any later files from being imported. And it will keep breaking the import. You need to remove the book to let others get imported. Remove the one you know is a problem, and try another comic to see how it goes.

[sekazi]

For my CBZ files what I do is select all of the JPG files named 00000.jpg to 99999.jpg or what ever the last photo number is and create a zip file using 7-zip with no compression and rename it to cbz before it creates the file. The only special characters I use in the file name is . , ' -

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by sekazi

For my CBZ files what I do is select all of the JPG files named 00000.jpg to 99999.jpg or what ever the last photo number is and create a zip file using 7-zip with no compression and rename it to cbz before it creates the file. The only special characters I use in the file name is . , ' -

If they work for you, good to know. But, I am surprised that the single quote does work. That's one I would have expected to cause trouble.

For the record, the KoboTouch driver in calibre replaces the following characters with an underscore when sending files to the Kobo devices.

/\?%*:;|"'><$!

This is only the book file name. It doesn't touch the internal file names. The reason for the removal is how the device constructs some identifiers in the database. Because of the way it does this, I would expect similar issues if these characters are used in the internal file names. But, each book format is different. The way this is done for CBZ/CBR might avoid these issues.

[codychan]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That isn't the case here. And in fact, I remember reporting a bug to Kobo related to subdirectories. It was fixed a long time ago. Testing it now, having one level of subdirectories in a CBZ works.

Extra files should be OK as well. Or, at least the "Thumbs.db" in on of the CBZ files isn't breaking anything.

But, there could be a problem with the file names. Calibre will make sure the archive file name is OK for the device. But, it won't touch the internal file names. If these have unsafe characters in them, they might cause problems.

Weeks ago, I accidentally sent a cbz file which consists of a directory and the directory contains images, but my kobo failed to open it. and I deleted the directory and sent it to kobo, it worked again.

As for the "contains only image", I mean it shouldn't contain directory, at least that'w what I do.

Anyway, I read of cbz files, and every cbz only contains images, no extra files or directory, and the names of image should be a list of ordered numbers or something like that. It never goes wrong.