Calibre & iTunes (a couple's counseling workshop)

[Wreybies]

Don't you just love when someone shows you something that makes you realize you've been doing whatever it is you've been doing bass-ackwards?

Yeah. So, Calibre and iTunes.

I had been doing it the hard way, pulling my Calibre library over to iTunes from within iTunes which was causing all kinds of problems. Some books (not all, just a few select scalawags) would always repeat and cause doubling of books for reason beyond my ken. I would have to either dig down through the file structure of the Calibre library and pluck books individually or erase all the doubled books, and... tedious!

Here's how to make it happen neat and happy.

First, make sure you have the latest Calibre (0.7.27 as of this posting)


Quick start: 'Connect to iTunes' mode

1. Launch iTunes with no connected iDevices.
2. Launch Calibre, set Preferences:
   • Preferences|General|Preferred output format to EPUB and while you're there, make sure you also check the No SVG Cover box otherwise your book covers wont show up and if you are as picky as I am about covers and artwork....
   • Preferences|Conversion|Page Setup|Output profile to iPad
   • Preferences|Plugins|Device Interface plugins|Apple device interface - click Enable/Disable plugin so that driver is disabled (Yes, disabled. Grayed out)

1. Restart Calibre.
2. Select Connect/Share↓ and from the drop down select Connect to iTunes to connect iTunes as a Reader.

Now when you add a book to Calibre, you can simply send the one or two or three book(s) directly to iTunes (Send to Device)without any muss or fuss. It works simply, cleanly, and intuitively in a very Apple kind of way.

All of the settings will remain as you have chosen from there onward save for one. Whenever you open Calibre, you have to do the Connect/Share and then Connect to iTunes bit.

A big (and I mean BIG) thank you to Mickey 330 (Marilyn) for pointing me in the direction of this information!

 

[Mickey330]

First, thanks for the shout out ... but, really, I should be thanking you for clarifying the steps. Sometimes, it can be very confusing, no? I just pointed you in the direction of that thread on MobileRead - doesn't mean that I underSTOOD it!

Your post here is a great guide and I am going to keep it handy, just-in-case. It makes me want to put my e-books onto the iPad versus using my e-ink device.

Well .... almost!

Marilyn

 

[Hasty]

Thanks. Learned something here.

Was in too much of a hurry as usual........

 

[deckyon]

It got so frustrating that I damn near gave up. I will have to marry these two apps when I get home later...

Thanks for the walk-thru.

 

[Wreybies]

Very welcome to all. Glad I could add.

In the original guide I found the Connect to iTunes options was stated as being found under the Send to Device option.

No. It is not.

 

[Fedrich519]

Huge thanks. Love calibre and just got my iPad. Really wanting to join up the two programs.

 

[Wreybies]

The two do really work splendidly together. If your purpose for your iPad is to read ebooks, then I would say that Calibre is indispensable if for no other reason, the fact that it is like the ultimate polyglot interpreter, taking everything you find out there, regardless of file type, and letting you translate into a file type that iBooks is happy with. Calibre is your interpreter, the internet is the foreign and exotic land you are exploring. Enjoy!

 

[Mickey330]

Huge thanks. Love calibre and just got my iPad. Really wanting to join up the two programs.

Oh, then you'll really like Calibre2OPDS!

If you have cloud storage, such as [the free] Dropbox, you can create a catalog of your books that you can store "in the cloud." Then, once you find a book in your catalog you want to read, you can download it from the cloud to your iPad, read it and then remove it once you are done.

See this link, Calibre2OPDS, to see some more details.

What I like is the ability to store my e-books online and then access them from anywhere, to include the iPad.

Way cool, IMNSHO.

Marilyn

 

[Wreybies]

Huge thanks. Love calibre and just got my iPad. Really wanting to join up the two programs.

Oh, then you'll really like Calibre2OPDS!

If you have cloud storage, such as [the free] Dropbox, you can create a catalog of your books that you can store "in the cloud." Then, once you find a book in your catalog you want to read, you can download it from the cloud to your iPad, read it and then remove it once you are done.

See this link, Calibre2OPDS, to see some more details.

What I like is the ability to store my e-books online and then access them from anywhere, to include the iPad.

Way cool, IMNSHO.

Marilyn

Marilyn, have I mentioned to you that you rock all over outer space?

 

[slayda]

Your post here is a great guide and I am going to keep it handy, just-in-case. It makes me want to put my e-books onto the iPad versus using my e-ink device.

Well .... almost!

Marilyn

Be nice if you could do both (iPad & e-ink device) at the same time from Calibre.

 

[Mickey330]

Be nice if you could do both (iPad & e-ink device) at the same time from Calibre.

Do you mean have them both hooked up to Calibre at the same time? Cause otherwise, I'm a bit confused about your remark.

You can set up the iPad to sync with Calibre - and you can set up an e-reader to sync with Calibre. Calibre will recognize/talk/sync with whichever you plug in.

I don't know about both at the same time (cause there's only one "send to device" button in Calibre ... and I'm sure it'd get confused with two hooked in). But, you can for sure use Calibre with the iPad and most e-readers.

Or, you can do what I do and have all my books on my e-reader and in a Dropbox folder with a Calibre2OPDS catalog created. So, I can access my books however I wish, with whichever device. Oh, and I would also assume that if you had an e-reader with WiFi, you could access the catalog on the reader. But, my e-reader doesn't have WiFi, so I'm not 100% sure about that...

If you meant something else, sorry for rambling on...

Marilyn

P.S. Thanks, Wreybies, for your kind remarks.

 

[Wreybies]

You are welcome, Mickey.

And BTW, Mickey is correct. I am an avid reader. I devour books like they were tasty delicacies from the Far East. Calibre is very gregarious! It happily talks to pretty much anything and everything. Besides my iPad, I also sync all my ebooks to my Android phone which is using Cool Reader (because for some reason my phone stopped supporting Aldiko after the last firmware update). That's the great thing about Calibre. It's an interpreter as well as a place to store your ebooks. The reader that Calibre comes with is not the greatest, but I think that's really because Calibre itself is not meant to be your reading platform. I don't think that's its purpose in cyberlife. It is a go-between. An intermediary between your ebook library and whatever device, or the many devices, you are using to read.

*Note to self: Contact Calibre and ask them if they have an opening in their marketing department*

 

[supraluminal]

Squid Launcher. Oh Yeah!!

This site and the members who compose it are top shelf! As usual, you all make geek-tech problem solving as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Problem is, I want to shoot fish from a barrel.

While getting my personal libraries (music & literature) ready for the anticipated arrival of my new iPad 2 in another week or so, I ran into some compatibility issues which this thoughtful thread has conveniently solved for me...for the most part.

First of all, I started compiling my book catalogue on iTunes (on pc, ashamed to admit) and noticed that the add cover function does not work for most of my pdfs. I say "most" because any I copy to iTunes that show up with the default cover (a light-blue icon with a half-open folder) will permit me to add covers of my choosing. But pdfs that show the first printed page as the cover will not let me add a cover. ???

I tried many work-arounds with no success until I was graciously introduced to Calibre. With Calibre I can now slap covers onto all of my pdfs (and ebooks that are missing them), but...

Sending them to the iTunes library as per Wreybies' instructions still doesn't fix this. The covers won't copy over with the documents. (I tried "unchecking" the No SVG Cover box as well, just for the hell of it.)

I verified through third-party sources (like this one) that jpeg format pics can be sent to iTunes, but there is a lot of discussion out there about imbedded cover data problems that is beyond my scope of understanding and was more intended for Mac users.

Second, none of my ePub books will open from the iTunes library on my pc, but they will from Calibre. Conversely, all the pdfs work just fine (minus the covers). I don't know how to locate the information for each ePub file which shows if it's write-protected or not.

Just the same, thanks very much Wreybies, for the tutorial. It certainly put me on the fast track to compiling my book catalogue on iTunes. Here's hoping you have a few more tricks up your sleeve with regard to my above commentary.

Lastly, I am reluctant to pursue solutions which do not allow me to implement iBook because I am particular about enjoying my music collection while reading (jailbreaking does not seem like a wise option to me either).

Speaking of my music collection, thank you Mickey330 for the DropBox suggestion. With 160g of mp3s I was trying to figure out the viability of connecting a portable hd to the iPad so I could take my music library with me as well.

This cloud storage idea sounds like a much better (and workable) solution, presuming I can get a signal with wifi where ever I am. (I am assuming that DropBox can be utilized for music files, as I have not investigated this personally yet.)

 

[Wreybies]

The two issues you mention are ones that have been bugbears for me as well.

Let's address the PDFs first.

Depending on what your PDFs actually are, you can make use of Calibre's capacity to translate them into a file type that plays more friendlily (didn't think spell check was going to allow friendlily!) with iTunes, like into .epub format. You are going to have to go through some trial and error as concerns the translation process and if your PDFs have headers and footers (annoying little buggers) and you don't want to deal with them then you are going to have to learn a little regex. It's tedious and wether you try your hand at it or not may well depend on how neurotic you are about the end product's perfection. Needless to say, my personal neurotic need for perfect translation from PDF to XXX format falls under the proviso of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. LOL I have even gone to the extreme of reformatting ebooks through an html editor (KompoZer) to get the absoluteiestly most perfect product possible.

If you are interested in knowing more, please ask. I am not a guru, but I know enough to get you on the path.

Anyway, once you have them in a format that is more "native" to iBooks, things go swimmingly with book covers.

As to epub files that won't open in iTunes....

Are you sure you don't mean secure eReader format, a.k.a. .pdb? Ghastly file format. Ghastly. Got burned at the beginning of my trek into ebooking with .pdb files and will never evah buy them again. They are the only file format with which I am familiar that open only under strictest security measures and heaven forbid you should wish to read them on a different platform than the one you bought them for. There is info on the web as to how to get around these security measures, but I don't think that kind of chat is kosher here, so.... Google is your friend.

Now, if it is truly an .epub file that doesn't want to open, then I am at a loss. I have never had that happen with an .epub file. More info to lead me in my quest to help?

 

[Mickey330]

Just remember, depending on where you get them, epubs can be DRM protected. As in, you can only use the reader of the company that sold the e-book cause the book is "locked" to that particular device/company. So, if you've bought epubs from Sony, Kobo, Barnes&Noble or Borders, they undoubtedly have DRM and you won't be able to open them in Apple's iBooks (or probably even iTunes).

Calibre will let you use it to sort/arrange DRM books, but you can't really do anything else with them other than use Calibre to move the books to your reader.

So, long story short, that may be your problem. And, Wreybies is right, it can be fixed with diligent Googling for answers about DRM.

A little digressing here...

One, I don't use iTunes for anything other than back-ups and syncing my apps. Just not a very user friendly program, in my opinion. But, I treat it nicely and ask it nicely to do what I want - and so far, knock on wood, I'm very pleased with it's behavior.

All that to say - May I recommend that you look into Calibre2OPDS? I mention it (and have a link about it) a couple of posts up from here.

I have found (again, remember, I don't particularly care for iTunes) that it is much easier to create a web-accessible catalog in the cloud - in my case, Dropbox - for accessing with the iPad.

My Calibre library is on Dropbox. With Calibre2OPDS, I've created a catalog that can be accessed with Safari. This catalog not only has links to my books, it has phrases like "download this book as an e-pub." By pressing on that link, Safari will automatically open a page that'll have two buttons, one for the last app you used and another for "Open In." Press either one and bam! That app will open, your e-book will download and you are off reading. No fussing with iTunes. Just click and read.

The cool part is you can access this catalog from any web browser. Again, I just find it's easier than using iTunes (which is currently frozen because I tried to get the @#*(@! thing to quit doing a backup of my iPad ... guess I spoke too soon about how it behaves for me...!).

Anyway. I hope some of this helps.

Marilyn