Preserving images from DRM'd mobi

[Paulinafrica]

This thread was previously posted in the 'Kindle' section, but CRussel & alanspace felt that it will be more appropriate in the Calibre section and may highlight a conversion issue.

In essence, I purchased a book from Amazon that was poorly formatted, I imported it into Calibre in order to convert it to ePub so that I could edit the file in Sigil and in doing so 'lost' the images that appear at the beginning of each chapter. alanspace then recommended changing the file extension from .azw to .mobi I did this and when I reimported the file with the re-named extension into Calibre the images were then retained, which seems very odd indeed. Any insight will be gratefully received.
Cheers
Paul

[kovidgoyal]

calibre cannot convert a drmed MOBI (AZW) file. So I'm not clear what the two cases you are contrasting are?

[CRussel]

There was a thread over on the Kindle section and I suggested he post here since clearly something is happening when it's imported into Calibre. Paulinafrica has the plugins installed so that the AZW is de-drm'd as it's added. If he adds the file as he got it, <somefile>.azw, it loses images. If he takes that same file and renames it to <somefile>.mobi, and adds it to Calibre, the file comes in without loss of images. I don't think this is related to DRM at all, but conversion.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre treats .azw and .mobi exactly the same (they use the same code) when converting, so it has to be something else.

If the azw file is drmed then changing it to mobi will not make it convertible. If it is not drmed, then it must have gone through a dedrm plugin at some stage, and I would suspect that step.

[KevinH]

Hi,

I don't think it is the "tools" fault either. DiapDealer looked at one of the azw books in question and it was so messed-up you could not page through the ebook using the official K4PC software.

Here is his analysis of one of the problem ebooks:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...8&postcount=12

That "plugin" software does not play with images at all for .azw/.mobi files so I think the ebook itself is probably the issue.

[Paulinafrica]

I can confirm that I re-named the file extension from within 'My Kindle Content' of the original file from B0050CM448_EBOK.azw to B0050CM448_EBOK - Copy.mobi, bizarrely the newly named mobi file does not sport a padlock on the icon.

I had previously 'liberated' the original file via Calibre, but in removing the DRM from the original file this would not have affected the original file held in 'My Kindle Content' in any way?

As Kovid says the plug-ins treat both azw and mobi in the same way, so it is quite odd and I am assuming as stated above that only the liberated file is transferred to the Calibre library and the original in the 'My Kindle Content' folder remains untouched - it still has a padlock icon indicating that DRM is still present.

Cheers
Paul