Saving to disk, Calibre, epub & covers

[varaonaid]

Hello,

I've imported and converted numerous books with Calibre and have been really pleased. I've done a lot of updating of the book covers and everything looks great.

However, I'm trying to get these over to my phone and it isn't going so well. First of all, when I tried to save to disk (the SD card) I ended up with only the cover.jpg and metadata files. Then I unchecked the "save cover separately" and "save metadata in OPF file" and I ended up with valid epub files that wouldn't crash my ebook reader but with no covers at all. I'm wondering what to do or what I'm doing wrong. Is there a way to "embed" the covers into the epub file? If so, I'd really appreciate any info on how to fix this.

I tried to install the ebook reader on my Android device that works and syncs with Calibre but it didn't work on my device at all. So, I've been simply trying to copy the epub files over to the sd card and importing them into the ebook reader. If there's a better way to do this, please let me know.

Also, I'm using the default ebook profile.

Thanks in advance!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by varaonaid

Is there a way to "embed" the covers into the epub file? If so, I'd really appreciate any info on how to fix this.

The cover is inserted as the first page when you convert or create the ePub. Calibre now sets the cover as a SVG image. Some readers don't support this and the result is no cover being displayed at all. Kovid just placed an option "No SVG cover" in the ePub conversion output. Checking this option will cause the output to insert a jpg cover instead which should show up on your device.

I hope this works for you.

[varaonaid]

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I don't have the newest version? But I just updated a few days ago. Anyway, I can't seem to find the option to go with jpg over svg. Could you please tell me where to find it? Can I simply go from epub to epub to embed it once I get the setting correct?

Thanks again!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by varaonaid

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I don't have the newest version? But I just updated a few days ago. Anyway, I can't seem to find the option to go with jpg over svg. Could you please tell me where to find it? Can I simply go from epub to epub to embed it once I get the setting correct?

To make this a permanent selection go to Preferences - Conversion - EPUB Output tab - Check the box next to No SVG cover - click OK then restart Calibre.

Now every time you convert a file to ePub it will use a jpg file for the cover image instead of the SVG cover.

You can test this by taking an existing ePub that shows a cover in the Calibre ebook viewer but not on your device. Use save to disk to back up the ePub file.

Now, convert the ePub to ePub using your normal conversion settings. If it already has a cover you might want to check remove first image under the structure detection area. Otherwise you might end up with two images in a row.

If the output ends up screwed up go to the edit meta information box, remove the screwed up ePub and re-add the one you saved to disk and try again.

Experiment and once you have the conversion settings to your liking you can reconvert any other ePub that needs the cover adjusted.

[varaonaid]

Thanks for the help. So far, some of them will convert and several fail and I don't understand why. Here's the output from one of the error messages:

ERROR: Conversion Error: <b>Failed</b>: Convert book 1 of 1 (And Then There Were None)

Convert book 1 of 1 (And Then There Were None)
Resolved conversion options
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0.0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': u'original',
'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., 'chapter|book|section|part\\s+', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': 'd:\\users\\rachel\\appdata\\local\\temp\\calibre_ 0.6.51__nwnbu.jpeg',
'debug_pipeline': None,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_split_on_page_breaks': False,
'extra_css': None,
'extract_to': None,
'flow_size': 260,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'footer_regex': u'(?i)(?<=<hr>)((\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?\\d+<br>\\s*.*?\\s*)|(\\s* <a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?.*?<br>\\s*\\d+))(?=<br>)' ,
'header_regex': u'(?i)(?<=<hr>)((\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?\\d+<br>\\s*.*?\\s*)|(\\s* <a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?.*?<br>\\s*\\d+))(?=<br>)' ,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x04E9F030>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_metadata': False,
'isbn': None,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0.0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_default_epub_cover': False,
'no_inline_navbars': False,
'no_svg_cover': True,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.OutputProfile object at 0x04E9F210>,
'page_breaks_before': u'/',
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'preprocess_html': False,
'pretty_print': True,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': 'd:\\users\\rachel\\appdata\\local\\temp\\calibre_ 0.6.51_japi4t.opf',
'remove_first_image': False,
'remove_footer': False,
'remove_header': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'tags': None,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: EPUB Input running
on D:\Users\Rachel\Calibre Library\Agatha Christie\And Then There Were None (558)\And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie.epub
Found HTML cover OEBPS/text/content001.xhtml
Parsing all content...
Parsing OEBPS/text/content001.xhtml ...
Parsing OEBPS/styles/style001.css ...
Python function terminated unexpectedly
Spine is empty (Error Code: 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site.py", line 103, in main
File "site.py", line 85, in run_entry_point
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 99, in main
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 24, in gui_convert
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plumber.py", line 803, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plumber.py", line 930, in create_oebbook
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\oeb\reader.py", line 72, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\oeb\reader.py", line 594, in _all_from_opf
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\oeb\reader.py", line 289, in _spine_from_opf
calibre.ebooks.oeb.base.OEBError: Spine is empty


Any idea what I should do to fix or which option this refers to? The odd thing is that some of them do convert without error so that's why I don't understand what settings could cause the issues.

Thanks for all the help!

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by varaonaid

Spine is empty...Spine is empty
Any idea what I should do to fix or which option this refers to? The odd thing is that some of them do convert without error so that's why I don't understand what settings could cause the issues.

I've seen "Spine is empty" errors for various invalid html issues, from missing opening or closing <html> tags to zero-byte empty files. You may want to post one of the files that fails to convert in the bug tracker.