Problems finding Comic Book metadata in Calibre

[American_Desi]

I wonder if anyone else has had this problem.

I have a lot of comic books in my Calibre library, and I find that the metadata search function invariably fails to find the right data. I understand that individual comic books don't have ISBN numbers, but it appears that Calibre is finding metadata for individual comics, just not the right ones.

I have the title, author, and even publisher but still it gets it wrong. I just wonder if anyone has had this problem and a fix for it.

[sealbeater]

Honestly I'm not sure Calbre is the right app for comics. I think comicrack is much better.

[American_Desi]

I don't think comicrack would work for me. I have a Mac and read my comics on iPad. Besides which, I like to organize series that include both comics and e-books.

[kovidgoyal]

Depends on what metadata plugins you use. You should find ones that are well suited to comics. The default ones are not.

[Krazykiwi]

There's a Comicvine plugin for Calibre, which is by far the best and most widely used metadata scraper Comicrack uses. Give that a try (I would tell you if it's as good, but I use Comicrack, so I've never tried the Calibre plugin.)

[dickloraine]

Not a pure in calibre solution, but I use ComicTagger to get the metadata into the comics (it is multi platform). It scraps comicvine and even compares covers to find the right comic. After using ComicTagger, I add the comics to calibre. If you saved the metadata in the comic book lover style in ComicTagger (I personally save the metadata in that and in the comicrack style), calibre will be able to read the standard metadata. If you want to import more metadata (such as penciller, cover artist etc) and/or be able to embed changes you make in calibre back into the comics, take a look at my calibre plugin "EmbedComicMetadata".

[American_Desi]

Originally Posted by Krazykiwi

There's a Comicvine plugin for Calibre, which is by far the best and most widely used metadata scraper Comicrack uses. Give that a try (I would tell you if it's as good, but I use Comicrack, so I've never tried the Calibre plugin.)

I can't seem to find this plugin, but would like to know more about how to get it. I go to Preferences/Advanced/Plugin and hit "Get New Plugins" The only comic-related plugin I can find is something that says "Embed Comic metadata" and does not appear to be from Comicvine.

Is there some other way to get the plugin?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by American_Desi

Is there some other way to get the plugin?

Read dickloraine's post (#6), he wrote the plugin that I suspect Krazykiwi's post referenced. The name of the plugin is at the end of his post.

And you could have found it by doing this:



BR

[dickloraine]

The comicvine plugin is no longer maintained, as far as I know. I don't know of a reliable way to scrap metadata for comics in calibre itself at the moment.

There are programs that can get metadata for comics and embed them in the comics. ComicTagger and ComicRack are the most common tools I know of.

My plugin comes into play after these outside tools are used. It can read the embedded metadata (there are two ways metadata are commonly embedded in comics, calibre natively only supports one of them) and import it into calibre. It also allows to import more specialized metadata to be imported to custom columns.

[Krazykiwi]

Yup, follow dickloraine's advice, not mine

[American_Desi]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

The comicvine plugin is no longer maintained, as far as I know. I don't know of a reliable way to scrap metadata for comics in calibre itself at the moment.

There are programs that can get metadata for comics and embed them in the comics. ComicTagger and ComicRack are the most common tools I know of.

My plugin comes into play after these outside tools are used. It can read the embedded metadata (there are two ways metadata are commonly embedded in comics, calibre natively only supports one of them) and import it into calibre. It also allows to import more specialized metadata to be imported to custom columns.

Thanks. I'll look into those. Any advice for getting metadata for the comics that are already in Calibre? What plugin do you use? The default ones are not helping.

[dickloraine]

I think the most easy way would be to export the comics, scrap the metadata and reimport them. Use a template for the export that puts the series informations in the filename, if it is a series otherwise author and title.

[ComiCDroid]

unfortunately, the comic tagger no longer connects to CV

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by ComiCDroid

unfortunately, the comic tagger no longer connects to CV

Oh, you are right. Comicvine apparently changed the url for the api.

I did a quick fix for it, but have no intention to build executables for it. But it works the same just under python.

Here is the repo for it: https://github.com/dickloraine/Comictagger

What is needed is a python 2.7 installation and for the gui PyQt4.
Then unzip the source code somewhere and do
python setup.py install
in the directory in the console. That should install it.

The easiest way on windows that I know of to get python and PyQt4 is to use Chocolatey. It has a gui too.

[American_Desi]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Oh, you are right. Comicvine apparently changed the url for the api.

I did a quick fix for it, but have no intention to build executables for it. But it works the same just under python.

Here is the repo for it: https://github.com/dickloraine/Comictagger

What is needed is a python 2.7 installation and for the gui PyQt4.
Then unzip the source code somewhere and do
python setup.py install
in the directory in the console. That should install it.

The easiest way on windows that I know of to get python and PyQt4 is to use Chocolatey. It has a gui too.

With great humility, I must admit to being a MacOS user. I don't suppose this would work for that?