Pulling my hair out with this metadata search...

[mmobes]

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, but it must be something.

I lost my library after migrating to a new PC awhile back. No big deal, and I learned some lessons. In trying to rebuild, I'm struggling with some metadata.

For instance, I'm importing all my Harry Potter books. Very widely known, very popular book. You'd figure the metadata would be easy to import as well, right? Nope. I'm trying to get HP 4, and no matter what I put in any field, it pulls random books that aren't the highly known HP 4.

For plugins, I've only enabled Goodreads and Kindle Hi-res covers. That has served me decently until now. Is there a better MD source I should be adding? Or is there some other secret sauce I'm missing?

[Sirtel]

I fill all the metadata in manually, no downloading. Yes, I buy a lot of books and it takes a lot of time. But as I'd have to edit the downloaded metadata anyway, doing it manually is still faster.

[Karellen]

Assuming you lost the Calibre library and not the ebooks, isn't the metadata already saved from your previous library?
It is saved in the metadata.opf file next to the ebook or, if that is missing, the embedded metadata in the ebook.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Assuming you lost the Calibre library and not the ebooks, isn't the metadata already saved from your previous library?
It is saved in the metadata.opf file next to the ebook or, if that is missing, the embedded metadata in the ebook.

I guess they lost everything and are now re-downloading their books from various vendors.

[mmobes]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I guess they lost everything and are now re-downloading their books from various vendors.

Exactly this. I lost everything, so I'm starting over from scratch.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I guess they lost everything and are now re-downloading their books from various vendors.

Originally Posted by mmobes

Exactly this. I lost everything, so I'm starting over from scratch.

Ok, thanks.

Bummer!!
I am like @sirtel. I manually edit my metadata and rarely use the scrapers. But the image shows my settings and it works fine on the rare occassion I use it.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by mmobes

For plugins, I've only enabled Goodreads and Kindle Hi-res covers. That has served me decently until now. Is there a better MD source I should be adding? Or is there some other secret sauce I'm missing?

For myself, I use Amazon.com using Amazon servers, Kobo Metadata and Smashwords Metadata. For covers, I added the Kindle hi-res covers and Apple Books covers.

You seem to have yourself setup to get metadata only from Goodreads with the addition of higher res cover using the Kindle hi-res covers plugin. Personally, I long ago removed Goodreads as a metadata source since I found that it's metadata was often wrong and when right, was not very high quality. As for Goodreads covers? The less said, the better since they made B&N look like a great source for hi-res covers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For myself, I use Amazon.com using Amazon servers, Kobo Metadata and Smashwords Metadata. For covers, I added the Kindle hi-res covers and Apple Books covers.

You seem to have yourself setup to get metadata only from Goodreads with the addition of higher res cover using the Kindle hi-res covers plugin. Personally, I long ago removed Goodreads as a metadata source since I found that it's metadata was often wrong and when right, was not very high quality. As for Goodreads covers? The less said, the better since they made B&N look like a great source for hi-res covers.

For getting hi-res covers, I've found that getting the covers from Apple works well. Getting covers frm Kobo is not working well due to Cloudflare being a POS.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For getting hi-res covers, I've found that getting the covers from Apple works well. Getting covers frm Kobo is not working well due to Cloudflare being a POS.

Hence the reason that I use two plugins that exist to download higher resolution covers and do not have any other metadata download functions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hence the reason that I use two plugins that exist to download higher resolution covers and do not have any other metadata download functions.

I have the Apple downloader set to US and UK that way if I like the UK cover better, I can choose that if it's high enough resolution.