Clara BW Setup Help (automated workflows)

[reezox]

Hi there! I hope I'm in the right forum

I got my first eReader 2 days ago, a Clara BW. Everything seems to work fine, except the lack of option to automatically sideload books over WiFi.

I've done some googling and been trying to find how to set everything up, but it seems like I've just gotten some puzzle pieces and not the complete picture.

So most of my stuff is in ePub, I do have some PDFs which I would love to read, but I have noticed that the stock OS/reader application wasn't really PDF friendly. I do have some books that are part of a series, which I would prefer to have a collection on, vs just having it split up (I don't know which order the titles are, would be great if that could be fixed in some manner)
I don't have a Calibre library but I am not against creating it, assuming I don't have to spend more time on organizing the library, than actually reading books.


Ideally this is somewhat the workflow I would want
1. Organization and tagging of books. (Calibre?)
2. A way to sync, or at least access sideloaded books from the Kobo (Calibre-web?)
3. Automatically convert to Kepub on transfer to Kobo (Calibre with Kepubify or similar?)
4. Decent PDF reading (Is this doable, can PDFs be converted on transfer to a different format that would improve the reading?)
5. A way to import stuff to the Kobo, (KoReader, the beta web-browser or something else?)

What in this workflow do I seem to be missing, what are some neat tricks I've missed, or good tools that I've missed that would make this all easier? What are some guides that are pinned in some obvious place, that I have missed?

Thanks for any help or suggestions that is offered!

[Quoth]

1. Calibre does collections, series, subtitles, blurb etc
2. Sync with what? Calibre can store reading position and status. Search is fast and simple, so if I'd been reading on phone or vice-versa I search the last phrase I remember after finding ebook (both together faster than the two wifi connections a Cloud based sync for two same eco-system shop bought ebooks. Sideloaded content rarely included.
3. Kobo Extended driver on Calibre does kepub automatically. Some prefer epub. Kepubify not needed.
4. Screen too small for PDFs. Some PDFs sensibly convert and most don't Stock reader does crop per document. Only OCR 100% works to convert PDF.
5. USB is best. Charges while connected. You miss out on all the metadata features using KOReader or Browser etc on WiFi. USB is simple and reliable.

Calibre is the only thing needed for Mac, Windows or Linux.

[JSWolf]

There is a way to side load via WiFi but you do not the the extra metadata such a series, the blurb, number of pages, etc. You only get the extended metadata by side loading, disconnecting from USB and the connecting to USB again after the books are imported. NickelMenu lets you establish a USB connection with the need to unplug the USB cable.

[reezox]

Thank you for answering.

For #2 I meant automatically sideloading to the Kobo over Wifi, similar to how the Kobo store would work. Where if I add a book to Calibre, I would've wanted it to automatically send the book to Kobo. Something that would be absolutely fine most of the times, but for series if I don't get the metadata, that becomes problematic.

I don't think I would need the syncing of reading positions, as I don't see myself reading on anything else than Kobo for the moment, with the exception of PDFs.

Is there anything that would (automatically) OCR and convert PDFs then? I've come across "k2pdfopt" which seems to be what I want, but ideally (maybe unrealistic) it could be executed by Calibre on transfer. But I guess that it's also not that big of a deal to do it batch-wise if I still need to transfer the books with USB.

I'll start setting everything up now, thanks again

[JSWolf]

If you use the Kobo Utilities Plugin, to record your reading positions, you can tell which books you've finished reading. And you can see how far into the books you are reading.

[hatuluang]

Originally Posted by reezox

Is there anything that would (automatically) OCR and convert PDFs then? I've come across "k2pdfopt" which seems to be what I want, but ideally (maybe unrealistic) it could be executed by Calibre on transfer. But I guess that it's also not that big of a deal to do it batch-wise if I still need to transfer the books with USB.

In my case, I installed KOReader on my Clara 2E to read PDF, KOReader can force OCR to PDF non-OCR mostly. I use k2pdfopt for old PDFs that are created by an old scanner machine.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by reezox

Is there anything that would (automatically) OCR and convert PDFs then? I've come across "k2pdfopt" which seems to be what I want, but ideally (maybe unrealistic) it could be executed by Calibre on transfer. But I guess that it's also not that big of a deal to do it batch-wise if I still need to transfer the books with USB.

No automatic OCR. OCR needs manual proofing.
k2pdfopt does let you easily crop, make background whiter and sometimes extract text if it's there. If K2PDFopt works for the PDF, then you don't need KOReader.

If the PDF has no decent OCR text layer, then both k2pdfopt or KOReader may be useless for a 6″ screen and larger PDFs from scans.

Most old book & magazine scans are useless even with k2pdfopt or KOReader on even an 8″ ereader, never mind 6″. It can simple or a massive project to convert a PDF to a real reflowable ebook.