New Library Using Folders Organisation

[wisbit]

Hi all,

I have a huge collections of comics, already organised in folders

-Series Name 1
----N1 - Name
----N2 - Name
-Series Name 2
----N1 - Name
----N2 - Name
----N3 - Name
----N4 - Name
...etc

I tried to import it into calibre, it didn't really work out, nothing was recognised, in any case, it was unuseasble and would require me hours of work reoganising it.

It there any way, calibre can just take this as is ? Let's say I would make sure that every comic book file name (most of them cbr, cbr, or zip) contains the series name in it. Could it work ? so that at least I can easily get the series by series name in calibre and only change the author ?

Cheers for any help one could provide.

[JSWolf]

You cannot change how Calibre organizes your eBooks. But you don't need to. You use the GUI to organize how you see your content. It's really very easy. I used to organize my eBooks in directories similar to how you do it. Now I find doing it your way a hassle. Calibre makes organizing eBooks so much easier. Don't worry about how the directories are organized as you hardly ever see them.

[jhowell]

The question seems to about how to get calibre to recognize book metadata from the existing file names. This is highly configurable. See Guessing metadata from file names to get started.

As JSWolf pointed out once a book is added calibre will copy it to its own folders using its own file naming convention that cannot be configured.

[theducks]

A sideways way to GET metadata if it does not exist inside the book:
Look at the GetFileName Plugin. It stores the Path? + filename. during import. Then you can use the Bulk Metadata edit to parce that and populate additional fields (REGEX use experience recommended)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The question seems to about how to get calibre to recognize book metadata from the existing file names. This is highly configurable. See Guessing metadata from file names to get started.

As JSWolf pointed out once a book is added calibre will copy it to its own folders using its own file naming convention that cannot be configured.

I know this can be a sore subject but if a lot of these eBooks don't have proper metadata, where did they come from?

And even if they are legit and don't have proper metadata, you can fix that with the Calibre editor as long as they are either ePub or KF8.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And even if they are legit and don't have proper metadata, you can fix that with the Calibre editor as long as they are either ePub or KF8.

The OP stated that these are comics in cbr, cbz, and zip format. Those typically don't have any sort of metadata within the file, only images.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I know this can be a sore subject but if a lot of these eBooks don't have proper metadata, where did they come from?

And even if they are legit and don't have proper metadata, you can fix that with the Calibre editor as long as they are either ePub or KF8.

From my experience, from a legitimate store. Most of the books I have gotten from Kobo and Amazon have little metadata, or it is terrible. And as the OP mentioned comics, I have bought a couple of comic bundles for members of my family, and the file names were pretty useless. I fixed the file names to have the title before adding them to calibre.


@wisbit: As @theducks said, the GetFileName Plugin can put the full path of the file into custom columns and then you can the search-and-replace to set the correct details. But, I would probably use a file renamer, or script, to change the file names to include the appropriate details and then add the renamed file to calibre. @jhowell pointed to the way to get the metadata from the file names. It cannot use the directory name, hence the rename is needed.

[wisbit]

Originally Posted by davidfor

From my experience, from a legitimate store. Most of the books I have gotten from Kobo and Amazon have little metadata, or it is terrible. And as the OP mentioned comics, I have bought a couple of comic bundles for members of my family, and the file names were pretty useless. I fixed the file names to have the title before adding them to calibre.


@wisbit: As @theducks said, the GetFileName Plugin can put the full path of the file into custom columns and then you can the search-and-replace to set the correct details. But, I would probably use a file renamer, or script, to change the file names to include the appropriate details and then add the renamed file to calibre. @jhowell pointed to the way to get the metadata from the file names. It cannot use the directory name, hence the rename is needed.

Cheers that's what I ended up doing, I made a little script to rename files so that it would follow the "add books" read metadata from filename guidelines.
It kinda worked, more or less.
Now the idea was that once it's done, I would be able to download more easily metadata and covers online. but so far it doesn't work.
I get a feeling that the metadata and cover finder only searches for the name of the book ...
My comics have no author, because honestly, nobody cares much, it's mainly series name and album names. I made another thread on this
--> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=335630

we'll see.

[DaltonST]

The MFI Media File Importer plugin can easily do that.

That type of thing was one of its design goals.

DaltonST