Glo Low resolution book cover during sleep mode

[ragnor]

Hi,

Recently I've changed all my library to a new microSD (Sandisk 16GB, class 4) I've purchased. I don't really know if that's the reason, or maybe is caused by the new firmware update.
The thing is that during sleep mode, the book cover appears in a very low resolution.

Anyone knows why, and how to fix it?

Regards!

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by ragnor

Recently I've changed all my library to a new microSD (Sandisk 16GB, class 4) I've purchased. I don't really know if that's the reason, or maybe is caused by the new firmware update.
The thing is that during sleep mode, the book cover appears in a very low resolution.

Anyone knows why, and how to fix it?

I don't know why the firmware does this, but a solution is to sideload your books using Calibre version 0.9.28 or later and select the "Upload covers for books" customisation option for the KoboTouch device plugin.

[ragnor]

Thanks for your reply.
I've checked and there's no problem with the covers. They are in high resolution and the first page on the book displays the cover correctly.
It's only during sleep mode.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by ragnor

Thanks for your reply.
I've checked and there's no problem with the covers. They are in high resolution and the first page on the book displays the cover correctly.
It's only during sleep mode.

But did you send the covers using Calibre? If not then they will display at very low resolution on the sleep screen, even if they are OK on the first page of the book.

[GeoffR]

Here is a more detailed explaination of the problem, as I understand it:

Normally the first time the book cover is needed for any reason (display as a thumbnail, sleep screen, etc.) the firmware wil generate a set of images of various sizes and store them for later use. The next time they are needed they are loaded from the previously saved image. (This doesn't apply to the cover you see when reading the first page of a book, as that is loaded from the book itself each time, like any other picture in the book.)

For some reason the current firmware is saving very low resolution cover images for books on the external micro SD card. So when the image is needed for the sleep screen, it looks horrible.

Calibre can (if configured to) send pre-generated images for each book, which means that the device doesn't need to generate and save its own cover images, and so the very low resolution images do not get saved.

There are also some other advantages to using Calibre to send the cover images: The images will be displayed in thumbnail/home screen without any white bars You can choose to preserve aspect ratio or stretched to 3:4 ratio. You can send black-and-white images which save some space.

[ragnor]

Aha!
I didn't know about this option. I checked and reupload my books again, and now they are correctly displayed and without white bars.

Thank you!!

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Calibre can (if configured to) send pre-generated images for each book, which means that the device doesn't need to generate and save its own cover images, and so the very low resolution images do not get saved.

There are also some other advantages to using Calibre to send the cover images: The images will be displayed in thumbnail/home screen without any white bars You can choose to preserve aspect ratio or stretched to 3:4 ratio. You can send black-and-white images which save some space.

I can't get covers to display without the white sidebars when on the SD card if the covers aren't 3:4. Where I set the options are in Plugins, Device Interface options, Kobo Touch, I have the following settings checked: Delete Empty Bookshelves, Upload Black and White Covers, Create Bookshelves, Upload covers for books, and Set Series Information.

Is there another place in settings that I'm missing or what am I doing wrong?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I can't get covers to display without the white sidebars when on the SD card if the covers aren't 3:4. Where I set the options are in Plugins, Device Interface options, Kobo Touch, I have the following settings checked: Delete Empty Bookshelves, Upload Black and White Covers, Create Bookshelves, Upload covers for books, and Set Series Information.

Is there another place in settings that I'm missing or what am I doing wrong?

There is nothing else you should need to do, so I don't know why it is not working for you. I've tested it on my Glo with books on the SD card and it works well.

I would try this test:

- Delete one of the books with the problem cover, using the book menu on the device.
- Connect to Calibre, and resend the book.
- Before disconnecting the device, have a look in the SD card directory koboExtStorage/images/ and check that there are three image files corresponding to the deleted book.

If the files are missing then something is wrong on the Calibre side. If the files are present then it must be the device side.

Edit: As an example, if the filename of the book is XXX.epub then the image files on the SD card will be koboExtStorage/images/file___mnt_sd_XXX_epub - N3*.parsed

Edit2: Just to check: you must use the latest Calibre version 0.9.28 -- earlier versions do not send covers for books on the SD card.

[Ripplinger]

I restarted Calibre, deleted everything off the SD card and the device, and then transferred the books back to the card only, and this time it worked for some reason. I didn't change any settings so have no idea why now it's working..

But now one difference I noticed though with reloading all books is that the series info in the library listing doesn't appear like it did. Actually I don't think it appeared for every series, but it did for some, and now it's not there for any series. Did I mess up some other setting doing this?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

But now one difference I noticed though with reloading all books is that the series info in the library listing doesn't appear like it did. Actually I don't think it appeared for every series, but it did for some, and now it's not there for any series. Did I mess up some other setting doing this?

The series information doesn't get transferred at the time the book is sent, you need to eject the device and wait for it to process the books, then connect to Calibre again. It will be sent on the second connection. I think the metadata management option (in sending books to device preferences) also needs to be set to automatic for this to work.

[Ripplinger]

Reconnecting the Glo to Calibre a 2nd time fixed it, and series info now shows for each book. Thanks for the info.

[davidfor]

@Ripplinger: As GeoffR has said, the covers are generated the first time they are needed. With 2.5.0 now storing covers on the SD card, all of them would have been generated using the first page of the book and your reader settings. That would have caused the white sidebars. To fix it, you didn't need to delete all the books. Just resending from calibre with the appropriate options would have been OK.

Also, there is a bug related to this for OSX. If the save template puts the books in the root of the SD card, the cover images are written to the wrong place. It might also affect Linux. I have a fix which should be in this week.

[mconh]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@Ripplinger: As GeoffR has said, the covers are generated the first time they are needed. With 2.5.0 now storing covers on the SD card, all of them would have been generated using the first page of the book and your reader settings. That would have caused the white sidebars. To fix it, you didn't need to delete all the books. Just resending from calibre with the appropriate options would have been OK..

I upgraded my Kobo Glo from 2.1.5 to 2.5.1. As soon as covers started to be generated to the mSD card they all turned to garbage low resolution, no 3x4 standard on the size and white bars on the side. In spite of the fact that the parsed image files were two or three time the size of the old images under 2.1.5 the resolution was horrible.

I thought that I would have to revert to 2.1.5 for the third time!!!

I then noticed that my 5000+ images (all 3x4 std.) were still sitting in the images folder on the Main Kobo drive. I copied them all to the Images folder on the mSD disk and voila, everything works great. The images now have no side bars and the resolution is great on sleep, library and home screens.

I am now very happy with 2.5.1. I can use calibre to load all future images until Kobo figures out how to generate them as per firmware 2.1.5.

The above also shows that it is the Kobo firmware that is generating different images from the same Books and not that there is a problem with the books cover pages.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@Ripplinger: As GeoffR has said, the covers are generated the first time they are needed. With 2.5.0 now storing covers on the SD card, all of them would have been generated using the first page of the book and your reader settings. That would have caused the white sidebars. To fix it, you didn't need to delete all the books. Just resending from calibre with the appropriate options would have been OK.

Also, there is a bug related to this for OSX. If the save template puts the books in the root of the SD card, the cover images are written to the wrong place. It might also affect Linux. I have a fix which should be in this week.

Seems to affect Linux as well. Although one time it seemed to send it when I sent one book to the device, but then I sent a whole load at once and no images showed up on the SD card's images folder.

When this is fixed in calibre, let us know

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Uschiekid

Seems to affect Linux as well. Although one time it seemed to send it when I sent one book to the device, but then I sent a whole load at once and no images showed up on the SD card's images folder.

When this is fixed in calibre, let us know

Are you putting the books on the SD card into the root of the card or into subdirectories? The problem, at least on OSX, only happened if the root of the card was used. And I think it would affect Linux in the same way.

Another problem was reported yesterday if the image directory didn't exist. The driver wasn't creating it, but it doesn't sound like that was the issue for you.

Both fixes will be in the next calibre release.