Associated Files, movies, audio, powerpoint (MP4, AVI, MP3, OGG, PPT)

[webmanoffesto]

What's a good way to organize the associated file which go along with an E-Book e.g. movies, audio, powerpoint (MP4, AVI, MP3, OGG, PPT)

I put some MP4 files in a Calibre folder with the EBook, then I changed something on the book (maybe it was author's name), Calibre cleverly moved the book to the new folder, but now the MP4 files have disappeared (deleted?).

In this case that's not a disaster, but I want to know how to do this correctly.

[Joanna]

The main rule: you never ever add anything directly to the folder with a book. You don't mess with the folder structure, files etc. in Calibre library. You don't even look in there .

There are no attachments as such in Calibre (something I very much regret and hope to see one day). However, you can simply add all extra files as if they were other ebook formats (using the "Edit metadata" dialog - just drag&drop). The only limit is that you can add only one file of a given format - but you can always try making adding a .zip, .rar etc. with all files packed together (just watch out if you're adding an archive with e.g. pdfs only - sometimes this would replace the original .pdf if you have such a format for your ebook).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by webmanoffesto

I put some MP4 files in a Calibre folder with the EBook, then I changed something on the book (maybe it was author's name), Calibre cleverly moved the book to the new folder, but now the MP4 files have disappeared (deleted?).

The mp4 files didn't disappear they are still exactly in the folder you placed them in. Unfortunately when you changed the author calibre changed the under lying folder to correspond and moved all known files to the new folder. Your mp4 files were unknown to calibre and are sitting alone in the old folder that is no longer associated with calibre.

One way to deal with this is to place all of your associated files in a compressed filed, zipped or rar should work. rar would be my preference since when you add an html file it is converted to a zip file and if you add an html file the converted zip could get confusing or accidentally overwrite some existing zip files. I just use 7zip to compress the files I want to add and change the extension to rar, if needed later 7zip will be able to open it as needed.

That said once you have your files compressed into an rar file. Drag that file to the Edit Metadata window, formats section (see attached). Your rar will now be associated with the book and any future changes will drag the rar file along for the ride as if it was an available format for that book.

[webmanoffesto]

Thanks. I'll put all the associated files into one .rar archive and drag-and-drop that to Calibre.