Troubleshooting Books converted to mobi with Calibre

johnnyb · 05-15-2011, 07:49 AM

Hey folks, I have a quick question... Why are books converted to Mobi (from ePub) with Calibre much much slower (as regards page-turns but more annoyingly, the dictionary) than Kindle eBooks or Mobi eBooks (e.g. some Oxford Dictionaries I have)?
I find it a bit tedious to always have to wait five to ten seconds for the dictionary to show an entry (different from said books where lookup is almost instantaneous)... And this is not limited to extra dictionaries I have but also to the factory-installed Oxford American and English Dictionaries (again, this whole affair is only restricted to books loaded on the device with Calibre)...
Firmware is the latest 3.1 version... Jailbreak and Screensaver hack are installed, but once again, this only happens with books from Calibre...
Anyone have any conversion tips? I'd be very thankful and delighted!

JMikeD · 05-15-2011, 11:08 AM

I routinely read books converted to mobi by Calibre and I haven't seen this behavior at all. There's no speed difference on my K3 with 3.1.

You might ask over in the Mobileread Calibre support forum.

alansplace · 05-15-2011, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Hey folks, I have a quick question... Why are books converted to Mobi (from ePub) with Calibre much much slower (as regards page-turns but more annoyingly, the dictionary) than Kindle eBooks or Mobi eBooks (e.g. some Oxford Dictionaries I have)?
I find it a bit tedious to always have to wait five to ten seconds for the dictionary to show an entry (different from said books where lookup is almost instantaneous)... And this is not limited to extra dictionaries I have but also to the factory-installed Oxford American and English Dictionaries (again, this whole affair is only restricted to books loaded on the device with Calibre)...
Firmware is the latest 3.1 version... Jailbreak and Screensaver hack are installed, but once again, this only happens with books from Calibre...
Anyone have any conversion tips? I'd be very thankful and delighted!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JMikeD

I routinely read books converted to mobi by Calibre and I haven't seen this behavior at all. There's no speed difference on my K3 with 3.1.

You might ask over in the Mobileread Calibre support forum.

i notice no behavior like that either. and i have quite a few that have been converted from epub.
--
Alan

abookreader · 05-15-2011, 12:33 PM

no problems for me either - certainly not waiting 5 to 10 seconds for page turning or dictionary look-up. Something's gone wonky for you.

johnnyb · 05-15-2011, 03:48 PM

ok, there might be a misunderstanding... page turning is relatively fast (though not as fast) but the dictionary takes 5 seconds (I just counted again) to show a result, only in Calibre converted books, not in Amazon stuff...
I also tried reconverting, to no avail....
Maybe I'm missing a particular setting, would some of you maybe want to share their settings with me so I can eliminate conversion errors (although I always thought this to be a very straightforward process)... Is it possible that something with the Kindle indexes is wrong... what happens if I delete the whole index folder?

Edit: I just deleted the calibre index and like the first time, it takes forever to rebuild it, it does two thirds in three minutes and then takes an hour to do the rest... That certainly wasn't the case with my previous Sony Readers (not even on first connection, I'm rather impatient and would have noticed)

abookreader · 05-15-2011, 05:10 PM

Well all of my books are Calibre converted mobi - my entire library. Even the ones that I purchased from Amazon get loaded into calibre and reconverted. The only special settings I use are

set font to 12
set justification to left and then an indent
put a space between each paragraph

My dictionary definitions pop up ... well I've never actually timed it but I'd say within a second or so of the cursor hitting the word.

You say something looks funny with your indexing. I'm not sure how the dictionary itself is indexed or even what dictionary you are using - but maybe that is your problem? The Kindle is having a hard time finding the right word in the dictionary? I'm not sure why your Calibre converted books would be different than your Amazon books in that case though.

alansplace · 05-15-2011, 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abookreader

....My dictionary definitions pop up ... well I've never actually timed it but I'd say within a second or so of the cursor hitting the word.

ditto...i randomly picked a book and it was so quick that i doubt if i could have timed it, but was in the close neighborhood of 1 second.
--
Alan

dwig · 05-15-2011, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alansplace

ditto...i randomly picked a book and it was so quick that i doubt if i could have timed it, but was in the close neighborhood of 1 second.
--
Alan

That matches a test that I just did, roughly one second delay for the lookup.

I have a K3/WiFi firmware v3.1. The books tested were one short story converted in Calibre v0.8.0 from an HTML source file and the other is a very large book (The Complete Celebrated Crimes by Dumas) converted from an ePub some time last year with Calbre v0.7.??.

johnnyb · 05-18-2011, 10:57 AM

well, still nothing new, have tried everything dont know what to do (maybe convert to html and send via email, does Amazon allow html?)

terencek · 05-18-2011, 01:19 PM

This may have something to do with the number of books on the device -- which does slow down significantly when doing searches (or even simply calling up the Home page) once you start bogging it down with a huge number of books.

Although the specs say it can handle around 3,000 books, in my own experience with about half that number on mine, it can take up to half a minute to get to the Home page after waking up the device. Complex searches are positively painful.

Even though Amazon says it can handle 3GB of books or around 3,000, my experience shows this would pretty much grind it to a halt!

robins777 · 05-19-2011, 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by terencek

This may have something to do with the number of books on the device -- which does slow down significantly when doing searches (or even simply calling up the Home page) once you start bogging it down with a huge number of books.

Although the specs say it can handle around 3,000 books, in my own experience with about half that number on mine, it can take up to half a minute to get to the Home page after waking up the device. Complex searches are positively painful.

Even though Amazon says it can handle 3GB of books or around 3,000, my experience shows this would pretty much grind it to a halt!

I have found exactly the same thing mine also take about 30 second when I call up the home page and in total about 1 minute or more to move a book to a specific collection. I have just over 1000 books on mine and because the slow speed of doing anything other than reading a book I am seriously thinking of taking most of them off and only leave a hundred or so on it.

daesdaemar · 05-19-2011, 01:49 PM

My converted books have no problems either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by abookreader

Well all of my books are Calibre converted mobi - my entire library. Even the ones that I purchased from Amazon get loaded into calibre and reconverted. The only special settings I use are

set font to 12
set justification to left and then an indent
put a space between each paragraph

As to the quote above, are your Amazon purchased DRM'd books converted? Can you elaborate on this please?

jukin · 05-19-2011, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robins777

I have found exactly the same thing mine also take about 30 second when I call up the home page and in total about 1 minute or more to move a book to a specific collection. I have just over 1000 books on mine and because the slow speed of doing anything other than reading a book I am seriously thinking of taking most of them off and only leave a hundred or so on it.

I had around 1100 books on my K2 and now have around 700. When I had 1100, every one was part of a collection and the Kindle was as slow as molasses. I read somewhere that collections were the problem and so deleted most of them, just kept a few. The speed difference was very noticeable, it was like a new Kindle!

I would really consider removing some of your collections if speed has become an issue. I do think it's the number and size of collections that affects speed much more than the number of books on your Kindle.

jukin · 05-19-2011, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daesdaemar

My converted books have no problems either.

As to the quote above, are your Amazon purchased DRM'd books converted? Can you elaborate on this please?

I was wondering about that too as I've had no success converting mine.

GoSharks · 05-19-2011, 03:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukin

I was wondering about that too as I've had no success converting mine.

The proper plug-in for Calibre will do it, look in the usual places (probably included in the tools download file - read the readme files). Good luck

05-15-2011, 07:49 AM	#1
johnnyb Cloud Reader Posts: 1,110 Karma: 4000066 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11	Books converted to mobi with Calibre Hey folks, I have a quick question... Why are books converted to Mobi (from ePub) with Calibre much much slower (as regards page-turns but more annoyingly, the dictionary) than Kindle eBooks or Mobi eBooks (e.g. some Oxford Dictionaries I have)? I find it a bit tedious to always have to wait five to ten seconds for the dictionary to show an entry (different from said books where lookup is almost instantaneous)... And this is not limited to extra dictionaries I have but also to the factory-installed Oxford American and English Dictionaries (again, this whole affair is only restricted to books loaded on the device with Calibre)... Firmware is the latest 3.1 version... Jailbreak and Screensaver hack are installed, but once again, this only happens with books from Calibre... Anyone have any conversion tips? I'd be very thankful and delighted!

05-15-2011, 03:48 PM	#5
johnnyb Cloud Reader Posts: 1,110 Karma: 4000066 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11	ok, there might be a misunderstanding... page turning is relatively fast (though not as fast) but the dictionary takes 5 seconds (I just counted again) to show a result, only in Calibre converted books, not in Amazon stuff... I also tried reconverting, to no avail.... Maybe I'm missing a particular setting, would some of you maybe want to share their settings with me so I can eliminate conversion errors (although I always thought this to be a very straightforward process)... Is it possible that something with the Kindle indexes is wrong... what happens if I delete the whole index folder? Edit: I just deleted the calibre index and like the first time, it takes forever to rebuild it, it does two thirds in three minutes and then takes an hour to do the rest... That certainly wasn't the case with my previous Sony Readers (not even on first connection, I'm rather impatient and would have noticed) Last edited by johnnyb; 05-15-2011 at 03:50 PM.

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05-15-2011, 11:08 AM	#2
JMikeD Evangelist Posts: 473 Karma: 15000 Join Date: Jul 2008 Device: Various and sundry	I routinely read books converted to mobi by Calibre and I haven't seen this behavior at all. There's no speed difference on my K3 with 3.1. You might ask over in the Mobileread Calibre support forum.

05-15-2011, 12:33 PM	#4
abookreader Wizard Posts: 1,516 Karma: 2567610 Join Date: Oct 2009 Device: Kindles - Keyboard, Fire, 2-US, iPhone, iPAD	no problems for me either - certainly not waiting 5 to 10 seconds for page turning or dictionary look-up. Something's gone wonky for you.

05-15-2011, 05:10 PM	#6
abookreader Wizard Posts: 1,516 Karma: 2567610 Join Date: Oct 2009 Device: Kindles - Keyboard, Fire, 2-US, iPhone, iPAD	Well all of my books are Calibre converted mobi - my entire library. Even the ones that I purchased from Amazon get loaded into calibre and reconverted. The only special settings I use are set font to 12 set justification to left and then an indent put a space between each paragraph My dictionary definitions pop up ... well I've never actually timed it but I'd say within a second or so of the cursor hitting the word. You say something looks funny with your indexing. I'm not sure how the dictionary itself is indexed or even what dictionary you are using - but maybe that is your problem? The Kindle is having a hard time finding the right word in the dictionary? I'm not sure why your Calibre converted books would be different than your Amazon books in that case though.

05-18-2011, 10:57 AM	#9
johnnyb Cloud Reader Posts: 1,110 Karma: 4000066 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11	well, still nothing new, have tried everything dont know what to do (maybe convert to html and send via email, does Amazon allow html?)

05-18-2011, 01:19 PM	#10
terencek Groupie Posts: 170 Karma: 1010944 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: The African bush Device: Kindle 3	This may have something to do with the number of books on the device -- which does slow down significantly when doing searches (or even simply calling up the Home page) once you start bogging it down with a huge number of books. Although the specs say it can handle around 3,000 books, in my own experience with about half that number on mine, it can take up to half a minute to get to the Home page after waking up the device. Complex searches are positively painful. Even though Amazon says it can handle 3GB of books or around 3,000, my experience shows this would pretty much grind it to a halt!