Adding Pictures As Covers

[dkritso109]

I have tons of comics which I am adding to calibre with no problem. The problem comes with adding jpgs to the database for use as covers. I have jpgs of all the covers, and it is getting real tedious dragging and dropping each jpg to the database. All of my jpgs have the exact name as the pdf or cbr I was adding. I was wondering if there was a way to add a bulk of jpgs to the database and then they would be automatically added as covers to the ebooks with matching filenames.

[Manichean]

That sounds like it could be automated using the command line. I'm guessing that a combination of ebook-meta and some scripting should get you there.
Edit: You should read the documentation for ebook-meta. It might be that you have to do this before adding the books to the library.

[dkritso109]

Thank you for your response, but I have no clue about ebook-meta or scripting. Could you point me into the right direction?

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by dkritso109

Thank you for your response, but I have no clue about ebook-meta or scripting. Could you point me into the right direction?

Read the Calibre manual entry for ebook-meta (Hint: The option you want is, unsurprisingly, called --cover). Then, read documentation as to how to do command line scripts/ bash files in whatever OS you have. The program logic you'll want to implement is something like getting a list of all cover files you have, then adding that cover to the ebook file of the same name. (Hint: This assumes that, apart from the file extension, the file names really are 100% identical. If not, figure out a way to compensate.)

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Read the Calibre manual entry for ebook-meta (Hint: The option you want is, unsurprisingly, called --cover). ...It might be that you have to do this before adding the books to the library.... Then, read documentation as to how to do command line scripts/ bash files in whatever OS you have.

This will update the cover in the ebook. You'll then have to re-add the book with metadata reading from the ebook turned on.
Other methods include:

• Use calibredb to set the metadata in the library, but to do that you'll need to create an opf file.
• Copy the cover to the Calibre library and change its name to cover.jpg.
• Fetch the cover online. You need correct titles and authors for this to work well.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Starson17

• Copy the cover to the Calibre library and change its name to cover.jpg.

That works? Without updating metadata or anything?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Manichean

That works? Without updating metadata or anything?

Yes. If the cover.jpg file exists, Calibre uses it as the cover. If not, it uses the default. The existence or lack is not stored in the metadata.db. It probably is stored in metadata.opf, but AFAIK, that file's just used for backup. I know it's not used for Merge, Copy to Library or for displaying the cover when Edit metadata is used.

[Manichean]

Okay, that would permit another scripting approach: Get list of all cover filenames, extract author and title from the filenames, figure out the corresponding folder in the library, copy image to cover.jpg.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Okay, that would permit another scripting approach: Get list of all cover filenames, extract author and title from the filenames, figure out the corresponding folder in the library, copy image to cover.jpg.

That's why I mentioned it, but Calibre library folders aren't named with obvious names (length control and book id issues), so it needs some more work. What is really needed is more comprehensive metadata import control during Add Books.

A table (like a plugboard) that says get the author and title from the filename, the series from the directory name, the book cover from the jpg image that matches the file title, and all other metadata (publisher, etc) from internal metadata would be nice. It's on Kovid's ToDo, which gets longer each day. (One of the few things with a length that grows faster than the speed of light - it's a good thing Kovid has a Physics background).