03-28-2014, 01:33 AM | #1 |
Enthusiast
Posts: 32
Karma: 97970
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Auckland, NZ
Device: PRS-650, Kindle DXG
|
How to read a large O'Reilly epub3 book
Hi,
This may be useful to those of us still running the PRS-650 and using PRS+ The background is I use my Sony PRS-650 to read technical books travelling to and from work by train. I find its size, battery life (fingers crossed) and eink screen to be better for commuting reading than my larger Samsung tablet. Now for the story: I took advantage of a recent offer from O'Reilly Books and bought an ebook on Software Requirements. I downloaded the epub version onto my PC and then sideloaded to my Sony PRS-650. Reading this book on the Sony was a dreadful experience - slow to load and turn pages, crashing when I tried to go back to a previous chapter or just freezing. So I checked the file size - 20MB! and talked to one of the developers at work who said size could be a problem for a low power ereader. As a check, I uploaded the epub file onto my large Samsung tablet and read the book using the Mantano ereader software - no problems, so this pointed to the file size as the most likely cause I then split the epub (using the ePubSplit plugin for Calibre) into 5 smaller epubs with the largest being 6MB and downloaded these to the Sony. This improved the loading speed and page turns, but I still got some freezes and crashes. So I did some more digging on the Internet and found that from early 2013 O'Reilly Books had switched all their books to the epub3 format. I could not confirm that the PRS-650 has problems with epub3 files but it seemed a reasonable assumption. I then checked Calibre's epub -> epub conversion and found the output would be epub2-ish. I put the 5 smaller epubs through Calibre's epub->epub conversion (targeted for Sony eReader). The 5 epub file sizes shrank by 50% so the largest is now 3MB. The true test was downloading the new versions of the 5 smaller epubs and then reading them. Speed is good, freezes are not happening, looks good so far (1 day). It is a nuisance having 5 files instead of 1 - However I did not have to buy a new tablet or ereader. Cheers Paul |
03-28-2014, 03:04 AM | #2 |
Wizard
Posts: 3,003
Karma: 18346231
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Sudbury, ON, Canada
Device: PRS-505, PB 902, PRS-T1, PB 623, PB 840, PB 633
|
Crap! I noticed a few days ago that most of my books were updated within the last year, and re-downloaded them. I guess I have the EPUB3 versions now. Thanks for the info.
|
Advert | |
|
03-28-2014, 06:36 AM | #3 |
eBook Enthusiast
Posts: 85,544
Karma: 93383043
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6
|
The PRS-650 uses a rather old version of Adobe's RMSDK (mobile reading software). More modern devices will probably do a lot better with the books.
The total size of an ePub file really shouldn't matter, because only one "flow" (normally a chapter) at a time is loaded into memory. |
03-28-2014, 09:12 PM | #4 | |
Wizard
Posts: 2,888
Karma: 5875940
Join Date: Dec 2007
Device: PRS505, 600, 350, 650, Nexus 7, Note III, iPad 4 etc
|
Quote:
|
|
03-28-2014, 11:12 PM | #5 |
Booklegger
Posts: 1,801
Karma: 7999816
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Device: BeBook(1 & 2010), PEZ, PRS-505, Kobo BT, PRS-T1, Playbook, Kobo Touch
|
I've found that page turns really slow down towards the end of 260K files on my PRS-T1, although it doesn't crash. It becomes a real nuisance. Fortunately I was able to find reasonable section breaks to make the files smaller.
|
Advert | |
|
03-29-2014, 03:43 PM | #6 |
350 Hoarder
Posts: 3,574
Karma: 8281267
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Midwest USA
Device: Sony PRS-350, Kobo Glo & Glo HD, PW2
|
Confirming what others have already said, once individual files are broken up correctly within the epub, I'm betting you can then restore the book into just one epub and your reader will handle it just fine.
I've opened up books and have seen a few where it consists of one HUGE html file. That will choke any ereader. |
03-29-2014, 04:24 PM | #7 |
eBook Enthusiast
Posts: 85,544
Karma: 93383043
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6
|
More modern versions of the RMSDK (Adobe's mobile ePub reader) have far fewer problems with large flows. Unfortunately Sony still use a pretty old version of it.
|
03-29-2014, 06:21 PM | #8 | |
Enthusiast
Posts: 32
Karma: 97970
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Auckland, NZ
Device: PRS-650, Kindle DXG
|
Quote:
Paul |
|
03-29-2014, 06:45 PM | #9 |
Wizard
Posts: 3,003
Karma: 18346231
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Sudbury, ON, Canada
Device: PRS-505, PB 902, PRS-T1, PB 623, PB 840, PB 633
|
The same is true of my PocketBook 902 9.7" reader. It's my preferred device for technical reading, and it's not going to be updated again. If these new versions feel slow, I'll have to dig through my backups to maybe find the old versions of the EPUBs (or just read the PDFs).
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
reader for read aloud feature in epub3 | me too | ePub | 1 | 08-17-2012 02:00 AM |
Free O'Reilly book on EPUB3 | pholy | Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links) | 0 | 10-07-2011 06:19 PM |
Which e-book reader can read large PDF files? | cchen926 | Which one should I buy? | 5 | 12-06-2009 04:39 AM |
Read O'Reilly Hacks Series books using Google hack | Brian | Lounge | 12 | 02-19-2009 03:17 PM |
Can't read one specific very large book on my prs505 | Rachel | Sony Reader | 12 | 12-14-2008 12:52 PM |