Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book Software > Calibre > Library Management

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 03-10-2012, 03:38 AM   #1
sOnO
Junior Member
sOnO began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 2
Karma: 10
Join Date: Mar 2012
Device: iPhone
Best of 2 worlds (CBR & ePub

Hi all,

I'm looking for advices concerning eBooks management.
I do have 2 separate libraries:
  • A first one with CBR European and Japanese comics (I mean , not marvel style), organized by series name / volume / title (3.5K).
  • A second handling ePub books managed through Calibre (3K).

One of my objective is to use the nice calibre features to display ebooks and CRB on my iPhone. I also would like to use its embed metatada scraper (amazon & google) to retrieve missing comics metadata.

The real pain here is the Calibre's files management behavior... If i import my CR directories into Calibre, I would duplicate all my CBR. If I choose to keep only the Calibre version to fill comics metadata, I won't be able to use CR on the Calibre files system because I couldn't find any metadata transfer feature between both tools (therefore the comics organization within CR would be terrible).

The ideal situation would be to enhance both tools integration so that I can Import CBR into Calibre (retrieve metadata & use the great ebooks server to read both ePub and CBR on my device), but could also use CR on Calibre file system to use all nice CR display features.

If someone knows a how-to, I'll go for it. ^^

Thanks for your advices

sOnO
sOnO is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-10-2012, 11:41 AM   #2
ilovejedd
hopeless n00b
ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
ilovejedd's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,111
Karma: 19597086
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: in the middle of nowhere
Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9
Have you already tried using the metadata scrapers on Calibre to scrape for manga metadata? I've found it to be more of a miss rather than hit most times. You're better off sticking to Comic Rack for comics. What app are you using to read your manga anyway? CBR files don't support embedding metadata unless you count plain text readme.txt or info.txt supported by some comic readers.
ilovejedd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-10-2012, 12:12 PM   #3
theducks
Well trained by Cats
theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
theducks's Avatar
 
Posts: 29,688
Karma: 54369090
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: The Central Coast of California
Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A
I am going to ignore the fact you did not absorb the stickies in this section before posting.

Calibre does not do as well withe Periodical collections:

Mine is: Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Analog SF&F)

You can't use the Short name because all issues have the same name

That leaves a choice. The title must include a Tie Breaker.

You can include Volume#/Issue # with the title
That begs 2 (or more) questions: how to find a issue by date or odd date ranges, what happens if the numbering changes.

Analog is Monthly, Except... They publish a Yearly Double Issue (2 months in one volume(#) that broke the volume=date method)

I use a mixture of Month# Year with the title to allow a sort (within the base title) by Month

Analog 07 1974
or
Analog 07-08 2003 <the double issue. It did not always exist in the early years

I chose title as the place to show the range naming because series indexes (numeric here) don't allow ranges or 3rd levels and I wanted the sort to work for Export as well)

I use the (Hierarchical) Series to allow grouping:
Analog SF and F[1974.07]
Analog SF and F[2003.07] The lower month. There is no 2003.08

The title allow grouping by Month in year order

I used Leading 0 Numeric Months to keep the sort in Month order.
April August December
01 02 12


All this leads to heavy Metadata editing and great difficulties in downloading metadata (my names do not match other sources known names. And those are really inconsistent anyway)

Be prepared for work

Last edited by theducks; 03-10-2012 at 12:14 PM. Reason: Continued
theducks is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-10-2012, 06:45 PM   #4
sOnO
Junior Member
sOnO began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 2
Karma: 10
Join Date: Mar 2012
Device: iPhone
Thanks for your answers

@theducks: I'm very sorry I didn't explain correctly what i was thinking about. Give me another chance.

I don't have periodical comics. That's the reason why i referred to "European" comics... like Tintin for example.
The great feature I love in Calibre is his webserver. I can choose from bed a book from my library and transfer it to my iPhone without turning on iTunes. When trying with comics, it proposes me to transfer the comic in my iPhone comic reader ComicZeal.

Today, all my CBR are managed in ComicRack because I love its native comic reader. But to have them available in the Calibre Webserver, I have to insert them all. At this point I would have All my CBR physically duplicated in 2 different files system. To avoid this situation, we could imagine having CR pointing on the Calibre File System... OK if CR could handle Calibre opf metadata into the file NTFS substream... Which is the main question. Workaround are ok if they do the trick (like a similar CR webserver, but it's also a solution I would like to avoid)

I didn't find any stickies on this subject, but I might have forget some of them.

@ilovejedd: I use the internal CR comic reader and ComicZeal on iPhone.

sOnO
sOnO is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-10-2012, 06:57 PM   #5
theducks
Well trained by Cats
theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
theducks's Avatar
 
Posts: 29,688
Karma: 54369090
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: The Central Coast of California
Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A
The middle sticky approaches it from the side (in your case).
Calibre needs control of the files and can't guarantee that if the if they are at the mercy of other programs (or the user )
Books Added or Removed must be don by Calibre to sychronise the DB with the files. Anything else will usually end a mess.

Tell your ComicRack to use the Calibre Library... It probably has the same problem.

Choose your poision... That is your best choice.
theducks is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-11-2012, 01:06 AM   #6
ilovejedd
hopeless n00b
ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ilovejedd ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
ilovejedd's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,111
Karma: 19597086
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: in the middle of nowhere
Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9
Quote:
Originally Posted by sOnO View Post
The great feature I love in Calibre is his webserver. I can choose from bed a book from my library and transfer it to my iPhone without turning on iTunes. When trying with comics, it proposes me to transfer the comic in my iPhone comic reader ComicZeal.

Today, all my CBR are managed in ComicRack because I love its native comic reader. But to have them available in the Calibre Webserver, I have to insert them all. At this point I would have All my CBR physically duplicated in 2 different files system. To avoid this situation, we could imagine having CR pointing on the Calibre File System... OK if CR could handle Calibre opf metadata into the file NTFS substream... Which is the main question. Workaround are ok if they do the trick (like a similar CR webserver, but it's also a solution I would like to avoid)
If that's the only reason, then I suggest you keep using Comic Rack for your comics. It really is better suited for the task. If you're fine not having metadata information when browsing your comics, I suggest you use something like Rejetto HFS and add your Comic Rack folder to it (as Real Folder). It's a simple HTTP file server that would allow you to download your comics via web browser. Pretty basic but it works.

Comic Rack has a pretty nice Android app that integrates nicely with Comic Rack on Windows. Perhaps you can suggest that the developers create a similar app for iOS?
ilovejedd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-11-2012, 01:08 AM   #7
kovidgoyal
creator of calibre
kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
kovidgoyal's Avatar
 
Posts: 43,771
Karma: 22666666
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Mumbai, India
Device: Various
Note that you can use any viewer you like to view files in calibre. Just go to Preferences->Behavior and uncheck use internal viewer for cbr, then calibre will use whatever viewer is default for cbr in your OS.
kovidgoyal is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-11-2012, 10:13 PM   #8
micster
Enthusiast
micster began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 39
Karma: 10
Join Date: May 2012
Device: none
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal View Post
Note that you can use any viewer you like to view files in calibre. Just go to Preferences->Behavior and uncheck use internal viewer for cbr, then calibre will use whatever viewer is default for cbr in your OS.
Thanks for that tip Kovid, I didn't realize that was possible and I have been wrestling with using Calibre or not because I thought I was tied to it's reader.
micster is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-21-2012, 11:51 AM   #9
MTR
Member
MTR began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 14
Karma: 10
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: PRS-505/iPad/NC/RT
+1 on Calibre's flexibility with 'other' readers. I''m still partial to good old CDisplay as a light weight reader myself. CR failed for me precisely because it didn't have server functionality. I guess Calibre spoiled me (no complaints here ).

I've been 'testing' Calibre's server for comics use as well. With a limited selection it seems to work just fine. I'm now considering adding the rest of my collection as well as over 2000 work papers (document scans archived as cbz), but how will Calibre handle over 75GB in files?
MTR is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-21-2012, 12:05 PM   #10
theducks
Well trained by Cats
theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.theducks ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
theducks's Avatar
 
Posts: 29,688
Karma: 54369090
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: The Central Coast of California
Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTR View Post
+1 on Calibre's flexibility with 'other' readers. I''m still partial to good old CDisplay as a light weight reader myself. CR failed for me precisely because it didn't have server functionality. I guess Calibre spoiled me (no complaints here ).

I've been 'testing' Calibre's server for comics use as well. With a limited selection it seems to work just fine. I'm now considering adding the rest of my collection as well as over 2000 work papers (document scans archived as cbz), but how will Calibre handle over 75GB in files?
Calibre only copies the actual file to the Library folder.
The file size has no other impact on calibre storing a 100 byte file or a 5 Megabyte file
The quantity of books (line items) will start having impact after many thousands (fairly big number) of books. 2000 is a breeze

OTOH The Viewer will take longer to digest a big file
theducks is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-21-2012, 03:46 PM   #11
MTR
Member
MTR began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 14
Karma: 10
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: PRS-505/iPad/NC/RT
OK, I wasn't sure if it was just the # of items or that file size mattered as well. 2k items indeed is nothing compared to the rest of my library . I probably will make a separate library for 'non-books' once I figure out exactly how to run multiple libraries/servers. I remember it being possible, just have to read up on it I guess.
MTR is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
calibre, cbr, comicrack, epub, server

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Conversion CBR to EPUB - colors gone ICalibre Conversion 4 08-02-2012 05:02 PM
Ok - cbr, epub, pdf - anything else? know-one Kobo Reader 6 07-11-2011 07:34 AM
Calibre could not convert cbr to epub sdtbluethink Library Management 4 07-01-2011 05:38 AM
CBR convert to EPUB failing. skullmonger Conversion 1 02-08-2011 09:33 AM
PRS-600 Help with CBR/CBZ to EPUB scribblenauts Sony Reader 3 01-14-2010 07:10 PM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:19 AM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.