Stuck with Calibre 0.7.34 from now on?

[Lupa]

I have been using Calibre for a couple of years and the updates have all been great so far, however since the latest releases (0.7.35 onwards) Calibre no longer sends pre-built thumbnails to the newer Sony devices PRS-650 etc. I have read into this, it's because the older devices are having thumbnails uploaded to them as well and slowing the readers down. I can understand this being a problem, but I cant understand why no option is available to enable thumbnails on the newer readers in preferences? Maybe I have missed something or there is a Plugin to enable this? If not does anyone know if this feature will be re added in a future update with the problems fixed for older readers?

Link to changes: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ght=thumbnails

[chaley]

It was my understanding that when disconnected from the computer, the new readers would build thumbnails from the information that calibre is still putting into the Sony database. Not having a 650, I can't verify the behavior. Have you verified that the 650 does not make the thumbnails?

I also can't test changes that should affect only certain reader models, so if the changes are to be made, someone else will need to make them.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Lupa

I have been using Calibre for a couple of years and the updates have all been great so far, however since the latest releases (0.7.35 onwards) Calibre no longer sends pre-built thumbnails to the newer Sony devices PRS-650 etc.

Have you actually tried the newest version or are you just going with what you're reading? I read the thread you linked to and I don't see this taking away the 650s ability to display thumbnails.

I could be wrong., but I suspect that the Sony 650 will take any epub with a properly designated cover and create a thumbnail for that book.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

It was my understanding that when disconnected from the computer, the new readers would build thumbnails from the information that calibre is still putting into the Sony database. Not having a 650, I can't verify the behavior. Have you verified that the 650 does not make the thumbnails?

I believe this to be true. I have just deleted all the books from my PRS650. I then connected to calibre and verified that all the thumbnails from the deleted books had also been deleted. I then resent all the books and disconnected. The PRS650 rebuilt all the thumbnails.

Caveat: all my books are EPUB. I'll dig around and see if I can find a PDF, RTF and TXT to see what happens with them.

I'm using v7.35

[Lupa]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Have you actually tried the newest version or are you just going with what you're reading? I read the thread you linked to and I don't see this taking away the 650s ability to display thumbnails.

I could be wrong., but I suspect that the Sony 650 will take any epub with a properly designated cover and create a thumbnail for that book.

Thanks for the quick responses!

I have downloaded both 0.7.35 and the latest 0.7.36 but I have gone back to 0.7.34. With Calibre 0.7.34 I can send books to my Sony Reader PRS-650 with thumbnails, when disconnected from the PC my reader shows the covers Calibre uses in the library and looks great. With the latest Calibre releases after putting epub books onto the device they just refresh on the reader with cover/pages within the book itself. For example the Penguin books I have just show the Penguin Logo and not the real cover. I have also tried to reconnect the reader with the wrong cover thumbnails to see if Calibre will send them but this does not work.

[jackie_w]

Just to complete the test. EPUB, PDF, RTF and TXT regenerate a thumbnail from page 1 of the book. For my RTF and TXT this is just an image of text. If the PDF has a proper cover image then it is displayed.

[ShaneR]

Being rather new to Calibre I have nothing much to add other than I have no issues with thumbnails being sent to my 650 with versions .35 and .36.

The only issues I did have was Claibre not being able to update the cover on the device if it was a DRM file (not the fault of Calibre). But, the original cover was always displayed.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Lupa

With the latest Calibre releases after putting epub books onto the device they just refresh on the reader with cover/pages within the book itself. For example the Penguin books I have just show the Penguin Logo and not the real cover.

So it works exactly as I thought, which is good because if I ever buy a 650 all of my 4500+ books will create perfect thumbnails since they are all epub and have a properly designated cover.

No reason to stay at 0.7.34 (unless you really want to) just convert your books to ePub so the cover gets properly embedded.

To each his or her own.

[kovidgoyal]

There is no easy way to distinguish which reader model is connected and whether that model has firmware that supports separate thumbnails or not.

So, thumbnails have been removed from the driver, as pointed out, simply convert your files to epub to update the cover. You may need to do an epub to epub conversion if already in epub.

[weatherwax]

I have not figured yet out how to make Calibre recognise my new ereader PRS 650 so I copy my books manually from file folder to Sony reader.
And although I only copy the epubs, all books also have thumbnails. They are created from the cover included in the book.

[jackie_w]

@kovid, chaley,

It doesn't really matter to me as I only read EPUBs, but on my PRS650 the Int Mem ebook thumbnails are all contained in a directory structure below

[Drive:]\database\thumbnail\database\media\books\

and the SD card ebook thumbnails are all contained in a directory structure below

[Drive:]\Sony Reader\thumbnail\

Might it be an option to look for the existence of those directories before trying to send updated thumbnails? My PRS505 doesn't have the directories. I'm not sure about the PRS600.

[kovidgoyal]

the problem is that those directories could have been created, for example by a previous calibre release.

[Lupa]

Originally Posted by ShaneR

Being rather new to Calibre I have nothing much to add other than I have no issues with thumbnails being sent to my 650 with versions .35 and .36.

The only issues I did have was Claibre not being able to update the cover on the device if it was a DRM file (not the fault of Calibre). But, the original cover was always displayed.

All my ePub books still have DRM and I never had any problems loading different covers from Calibre into thumbnails for these files until the last 2 releases. The problem I have now is I either need to strip all of my DRM books or stay with 0.7.34 and miss out on the new metatag interface etc. I understand Calibre works better without DRM but I have found it great for just managing my DRM ebook library and loading them onto my reader with covers until now. If I wanted to read on my PC the book would just open with ADE and not the viewer within Calibre.

So it works exactly as I thought, which is good because if I ever buy a 650 all of my 4500+ books will create perfect thumbnails since they are all epub and have a properly designated cover.

No reason to stay at 0.7.34 (unless you really want to) just convert your books to ePub so the cover gets properly embedded.

To each his or her own.

All of my books are in ePub but they are all still protected. Most if not all of my books have rubbish cover art embedded within the epub and I prefer the proper covers I have downloaded in Calibre.

There is no easy way to distinguish which reader model is connected and whether that model has firmware that supports separate thumbnails or not.

So, thumbnails have been removed from the driver, as pointed out, simply convert your files to epub to update the cover. You may need to do an epub to epub conversion if already in epub.

This means stripping DRM which can take ages if you have a lot of books and its questionable if its legal in some places. I can see how this could be a problem for my Sony PRS-505 though and I understand you need to support as many devices as possible. I'll just stay with 0.7.34 for the time being as it's so much easier, it's also quicker because it saves time after loading books onto my reader as it does not need to keep refreshing covers for new books I have added.

Thanks for all your support

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

the problem is that those directories could have been created, for example by a previous calibre release.

OK. How about a new yes/no thumbnails toggle option in the Sony Device Interface plug? Defaulted to "no".

[Lupa]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

OK. How about a new yes/no thumbnails toggle option in the Sony Device Interface plug? Defaulted to "no".

This would be perfect and would fix the problems with all Sony devices! But I don't know how hard it would be to add though. Can a plugin be tweaked to do this because you can enable or disable some of those?