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[Cmely]

Hello everybody

I wonder if any of you have already made a switch from Calibre to JRiver Mediacenter for managing your Epub ?
If 'yes' how have you done, in particular with regard to the transfer of data such as coverage, genre, series, label, abstract, notation, read ... ?

I've just made a first import of my books in MC, just to see, and it seems that none of those fields have been imported. Is there any special preparation steps I should be aware of ?

[JimH]

I don't have an answer, but we're open to improving support if you can help.

Did you try a Google search for jriver epub ?  There are several threads here and a wiki topic.

[Cmely]

I don't have an answer, but we're open to improving support if you can help.

I'll be happy to help, if it is not beyond the scope of my little knowledge 

Did you try a Google search for jriver epub ?  There are several threads here and a wiki topic.

I did it (quickly), and this lead me to try a first import of my book in MC. It went fine for the books (mostly epubs and pdfs), but I havn't yet found a way to include all the metadata needed.

[JimH]

Read about Custom Tags on the wiki.  You may be able to add them. 

[Cmely]

Read about Custom Tags on the wiki.  You may be able to add them.

Thank you
Im' gonna check that and I'll give you a feedback.

[Cmely]

Read about Custom Tags on the wiki.  You may be able to add them.

Are you talking about this page ?

[JimH]

Try this page:

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Fields

Read about Pre-defined and Custom Library Fields on that page.

[zybex]

Jim,
Calibre is THE reference for ebook management, so it makes sense for MC to try to be compatible or at least offer a migration path.
Calibre keeps each book in its own folder, with a cover.jpg and all metadata written to an .opf file - sample attached below.

Currently MC doesn't import the cover.jpg and also doesn't import Calibre's metadata from the .opf file, though it will write-back some MC-specific fields to the same OPF as "dc:custom" tags. Since the used tags are different, there's no interoperability nor an easy migration path.

It would be nice if MC did this when importing an epub/mobi/pdf/etc:
- import cover.jpg if present
- check if there's a "metadata.opf" file present; if it's a Calibre file (opf:scheme="calibre"), import the existing tags using whatever field mapping makes sense

OPF support is already there. From 27.0.68 release notes:
9. NEW: OPF tagging saves and loads all the fields in Media Center (using a dc:custom block).

Thanks!

[Cmely]

Ok, I see, I guess we misunderstood each other 

I should have express myself more clearly.

As I'm using MC since years, I'm quite familiar with fields, custom fields and regular expression, and I know it won't be a problem to create those in MC for managing Epubs.

What I wonder about, is how to retrieve metadatas that I've already added into Calibre ? All my books are classified by genre, series, notation, ... I don't want to lose those informations when switching to MC.

[JimH]

Are they stored in the file?

Edit: Just saw zybex's post.

We'll see what we can do.

In the meantime, if your directory structure reflects any of the tags in the OPF file, you could use the Tag on Import feature to fill some of the tags in MC.

[wer]

Calibre is THE reference for ebook management, so it makes sense for MC to try to be compatible or at least offer a migration path.

I think this statement is even more true than Zybex lets on...

Calibre is indeed THE standard for ebook management. And as such, it is so enormously far ahead of MC in what it does, that while interoperability would be nice the very concept of "migration path" is questionable.

Aside from mere tag compatibility, any user considering "switching" from Calibre to MC would have to be willing to give up so much capability that their needs would have to be modest in the extreme.  If they have to keep going back to Calibre to accomplish essential tasks, that's not really switching.

MC achieving tag compatibility with Calibre would be nice. MC being an actual replacement for Calibre epub management sounds outlandish.

Is the OP just looking for MC to be able to list their epubs (with metadata) nicely with the rest of their media, or are they hoping MC will be able to fully replace all Calibre functionality?

[Cmely]

Calibre is indeed THE standard for ebook management.

Well, it's certainly a great piece of software...but now it's missing a functionnality that MC have which is allowing distant management (with MC I can manage my media collection from my office PC while all my music is nicely stored on a distant server). It's not possible with Calibre.

Is the OP just looking for MC to be able to list their epubs (with metadata) nicely with the rest of their media, or are they hoping MC will be able to fully replace all Calibre functionality?

If it's all about hope...so, yes, in this case I "hope" that MC will fully replace Calibre 

But in a more reasonable point of view, I'm using Calibre only to manage my library. No ebook edition nor creation. I just need to have a place where to store my books, to arrange them nicely in the order I want, to do some basic corrections to the books (wich are mostly fields editions), to look at the nice cover, things like that...AND to be able to consult my library from any browser.

In some ways I have the feeling that this is more or less what I'm already doing with my music on MC. I may lack few functionnality but this is not even sure.

I think (from what I already know from MC) that it's worth the try.

[wer]

...wich is allowing distant management (with MC I can manage my media collection from my office PC while all my music is nicely stored on a distant server). It's not possible with Calibre.

Of course it is. Calibre has a built in web-server that allows metadata editing, and downloading and reading.  Or use remote control.

Although it's true that Calibre has only limited management through a browser, most of its unavailable functionality is functionality that MC doesn't have at all.

... I "hope" that MC will fully replace Calibre 

But in a more reasonable point of view, I'm using Calibre only to manage my library. No ebook edition nor creation. I just need to have a place where to store my books, to arrange them nicely in the order I want, to do some basic corrections to the books (wich are mostly fields editions), to look at the nice cover, things like that.

So clearly your concept of management is very different from what I'm talking about.

Calibre has a fully functioning OPDS server, and a HTTP server.
Calibre has a full featured ebook reader, with searching and referencing.
Calibre has a full featured ebook editor, which although not as sophisticated as Sigil, is easily capable of most normal corrections, fixes, and formatting changes.
Calibre has good ebook metadata retrieval functionality, that searches multiple souces.
Calibre has a multiplicity of built-in tools for cleaning up broken epubs.
Calibre has a TOC editor, with the ability to auto-generate TOCs from headings.
Calibre has a very capable ebook format converter.
Calibre has a built-in searcher/browser for getting new ebooks.
And finally, for ebook functionality Calibre doesn't have, it has a plugin framework with a wealth of 3rd party plugins to enhance it.

Comparisons are absurd.

So you just want something to present and list your books, and edit a bit of metadata. That's fair enough, and hopefully MC can get there eventually. But it's not what I'd call ebook management.  What you're apparently describing and using is a very small percentage of Calibre's capabilities.

[comox]

I agree with Wer.

I started managing books with JRiver (7,000 books) before Calibre (11,000 books) was a thing.

Now all my new books go into Calibre. I'd like to move the books in JRiver to Calibre but it's too much work so I've only moved my important books.

The Calibre development team is as competent and hard working as the JRiver team. There is no chance JRiver could catch up and be competitive in the book space.

Some of the big important features of Calibre that JRiver doesn't handle include:
- metadata retrieval and editing
- book editing
- format conversion

On the other hand, if your needs are modest and you don't want to learn a new application, JRiver is perfectly adequate for organizing books.

JRiver does have one important advantage over Calibre. By filtering on an Artist I can see in one view all of their documentaries, podcasts, audiobooks, e-books, papers, and video courses.

P.S. In case you are not aware of it, there is a killer app called Calibre Companion written by a different developer, for transferring and managing/viewing books on your phone. It's a must have.

[wer]

There is no chance JRiver could catch up and be competitive in the book space.

Well, I suppose I don't agree with that bit. JRiver could catch up I think, but would they want to or should they?  I'm just saying Calibre is a special purpose application, and there is a huge gulf between what it does and what MC does in that space. So it would be an enormous amount of work for JRiver, and is that even the sort of app it should be.  It would be very hard for MC to be a replacement for Calibre, in the same way it would be hard for it to be a replacement for Lightroom.  It's only a good replacement now if you use only a small percentage of the functionality. MC does a good job with presentation/organization.

[leezer3]

I'd quite like to go the other way actually.
Calibre's UI is in my view absolutely terrible. The metadata retrieval is useful, but I end up editing it anyways, so it's not a mega deal.

The *only* reason I keep it around is the conversion & tag on sync features.

[Richard Martin]

I'd quite like to go the other way actually.
Calibre's UI is in my view absolutely terrible. The metadata retrieval is useful, but I end up editing it anyways, so it's not a mega deal.

The *only* reason I keep it around is the conversion & tag on sync features.

Calibre-Web (https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web)has a great UI and has some of the features of Calibre, but is by no means a replacement.

[mwillems]

For my part, I'm very interested in better metadata importing from calibre even though I'd probably not "switch" from calibre altogether.  I use calibre for managing metadata, book conversion, book editing, etc., but I'd really like to be able to get the books from my calibre library and all the metadata into JRiver. 

Why? I want to be able to expose the books through JRiver's interface so my famiily can download them through various JRiver endpoints (i.e. panel, gizmo, etc.).   That way all of my media can be in one place for my family to be able to access it.  We don't use the integrated reader in the built-in Calibre server, we just use it to access book files, and, for just providing access to files/content, IMO, JRiver's media server options are substantially better and more configurable than the built-in calibre server (which has a few serious peccadillos that the dev team has indicated are by design and will not be fixed).  So right now I'm running a JRiver server and a Calibre server, and we're going to JRiver for music and audiobooks, but to calibre for epubs and pdfs.  I'd like to ditch the calibre server for content distribution and just use JRiver for serving content (I would still run calibre for e-book library maintenance, but that's a task I do myself). 

Basically I'd like to serve e-books as another kind of content in JRiver, and it would be nice to be able to pull over the metadata from the calibre opf files seamlessly.

[zybex]

Calibre is indeed THE standard for ebook management. And as such, it is so enormously far ahead of MC in what it does, that while interoperability would be nice the very concept of "migration path" is questionable.

Fully agree. Personally I don't intend to move my ebooks from Calibre to MC. Still, I think some support would be nice for people that just want basic functionality: cover view of books, metadata view/edit, double click to open (on the external Caliber book reader

[wer]

Yes, likewise. I also agree with what mwilliams said. And although I have no desire to move my ebooks into MC personally, I can certainly see the value in good metadata support for people who want to be able to find all their media in one place.  That's why I wanted to clarify what the OP was actually needing, because language like "switch to" or "migration path" can imply an awful lot beyond just that.

[tij]

i still prefer real books ... even my computer illeterate mother! switch to Kindle years ago lol

[mwillems]

i still prefer real books ... even my computer illeterate mother! switch to Kindle years ago lol

I felt the same way for years, but we have a small house and I ran out of space for books (and I'd already covered all the free walls with shelving!).  So I either had to get rid of some books I already had to make room for new ones or switch to ebooks for new purchases. The info-hoarder in me won out, so I kept my old books and now only buy electronic books :-)