Problem updating metadata (using mobi2mobi command line and gui)

[whitearrow]

Hi,

I bought a couple of books from Loose ID. They are non-drm'd mobipocket format. I want to update the author's name (metadata showing none), change the titles to reflect it's a series, and set the cdetype to PDOC so they will show under personal docs on my K2. I can't seem to make any changes at all to these files, though, without corrupting them, making them unreadable in the desktop mobi reader and on the Kindle.

I entered the following on mobi2mobi cmd line, trying just to fix the author:

C:\Program Files\MobitoMobi>mobi2mobi book1.prc --outfile book2.prc --author "Smith, Jane"

Names are changed Here's the output:

Database Name: Series - Book 1
Version: 0
Type: TEXt
Creator: REAd
Seed: 0
Resdb:
AppInfoDirty:
ctime: -1968466898 - Sun Jan 0 00:00:00 1900
mtime: -1968466898 - Sun Jan 0 00:00:00 1900
baktime: -2082844800 - Sun Jan 0 00:00:00 1900
---------------------------------------------------
FIRST IMG Record Id: 7307383
---------------------------------------------------
Image record index: 119 (150 x 225)
START IMAGE INDEX: 119
COVER IMAGE INDEX: 119
PDHEADER Version: 2
PDHEADER Length: 240118
PDHEADER NRecords: 118
PDHEADER Recsize: 2048
PDHEADER Unknown: 67643
LASTID: 7307383
-----------------
EXTH setting data: author - 100 - Smith, Jane - 0x4d796b6c65732c204a6574
EXTH add: author - 100 - Smith, Jane
MOBIHDR: imgrecpointer: 119
EXTH setting data: author - 100 - Smith, Jane- 0x4d796b6c65732c204a6574
EXTH add: author - 100 - Smith, Jane

------------------

Can anyone see what might be going on? I've done this before and haven't had this kind of problem.

I also tried exploding the mobi file with mobi2html in order to recreate the book, and that didn't work, either. It yielded a 1 kb blank html file and the cover image.

Thanks.

[tompe]

A blank html file is usually because it is encrypted with a public key. mobi2html does not handle this. I think calibre can explode these files.

But you should have been able to change the metadata. If you run mobi2mobi on the resulting file does it look OK?

[whitearrow]

No, I can't open the output file at all once I've changed any of the metadata. Mobipocket Reader tells me the file is corrupt and Kindle won't open it.

Here's the output from mobi2mobi gui when I convert the file without changing anything:

Database Name: Series - Book 1
Version: 0
Type: BOOK
Creator: MOBI
Seed: 0
Resdb:
AppInfoDirty:
ctime: -1968466898 - Sun Jan 0 00:00:00 1900
mtime: -1968466898 - Sun Jan 0 00:00:00 1900
baktime: -2082844800 - Sun Jan 0 00:00:00 1900
---------------------------------------------------
FIRST IMG Record Id: 7307383
---------------------------------------------------
Image record index: 119 (150 x 225)
START IMAGE INDEX: 119
COVER IMAGE INDEX: 119
PDHEADER Version: 2
PDHEADER Length: 240118
PDHEADER NRecords: 118
PDHEADER Recsize: 2048
PDHEADER Unknown: 67643
MOBIHEADER ciflg: 65535
MOBIHEADER ciptr: 65535
MOBIHEADER doctype: MOBI
MOBIHEADER length: 228
MOBIHEADER booktype: 2 - BOOK
MOBIHEADER codep: 1252
MOBIHEADER uniqid: 3640486247
MOBIHEADER ver: 4
MOBIHEADER exthflg: 80
MOBIHEADER language: 9 - 9 - 0 - ENGLISH -
COVEROFFSET: 0
THUMBOFFSET: 0
EXTH doctype: EXTH
EXTH length: 40
EXTH n_items: 1
EXTH item: 100 - Author - 18 - Unspecified Author
LONGTITLE: Series Book 1
LASTID: 7307383
-----------------

[tompe]

Strange. I need the file to be able to say something else about this and try to find possible bugs in mobi2mobi.