Size of downloaded covers too small when transferring to Kobo Mini after updating to 0.9.44

[Irene Peroni]

Hello, I successfully transferred several books (the cover of which I chose myself by using "edit metadata") from Calibre's library to Kobo mini ("device") with the previous version of Calibre installed, it must have been 0.9.43.

I was then asked to install the latest update (0.9.44), which I did. If I now download any cover (edit metadata -- chance cover -- browse -- then I pick a cover from my desktop, previously saved there, as I used to do before), it appears in Calibre's "device" window as very tiny. This also implies that it's too small on Kobo when I eject it and turn it on. I guess it's in some way related to your latest update. I am using Windows 7. Thanks for your help!

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Changing the component for this bug.

 assignee davidfor
 tag kobo-driver
 status triaged

[David Forrester (davidfor)]

Firstly,it has been a while since I change anything in the Kobo driver related to covers. And then it only has an affect on the device if one of the cover options are selected in the driver configuration.

having said that, I am not sure what you saying. You seem to have:

- Changed a cover using edit metadata
- Sent the book to the device
- Looked in the device list for the book. Saw the cover displayed very small.
- Ejected the device and saw the cover was very small (I'm not sure you did this as you say "implies that it's too small" which doesn't actually mean you checked).

I think this all comes down to the dimensions of the cover image you chose. What are they? They are displayed in the bottom right corner of the image in the "Edit Metadata" dialog. Though this can be turned off. The smaller the dimensions, the smaller the image displayed in various places.

It also depends on the driver options. If you have the "Upload covers for books" option set, the image is sized for the device and copied. If the "Keep cover aspect ratio" is set, the same happens except for the largest size used by the sleep cover. In this case, the cover image is copied unchanged.

If you don't have these options set, then the device generates the cover image from the first page of the book. Open the book on the device, look at the first page, that is what is used for the cover. If the cover image is small and displayed on the page without resizing, then the cover image the device uses will show that.

This also means it depends on the code in the book used to display the cover image. This can just display the image, or it can resize it to fit the screen. When the book is sent to the device, calibre replaces the cover in the book with whatever is in the library. If this is smaller than the original image, then it might display as a smaller on the screen.

Can you check the above? If you can attach a sample book and cover image, that would make it easy to check what is happening.

[Irene Peroni (irene-peroni)]

hello again, and thanks for your reply. I wanted to look into this before getting back to you. Yes, what happened several times, regardless of the size of the cover I had downloaded, is that once I ejected the device, the cover was in fact very small on my Kobo ("implies" was the wrong choice of verb, I am not a native speaker, sorry). So it appeared small both in the device list AND the device itself.
I have now done this several more times, and covers are now the right size on the device (even though they still sometimes appear small in the device list - again, regardless of the real picture size).
So the problem is solved without me knowing exactly what happened. I suspect it's related to my Kobo rather than on Calibre, though. am saying this because when I access my Kobo through Kobo desktop, it shows that my "library" as empty, while in fact there are more than 40 books in it.
Can I just ask you where I can find the "Upload covers for books" option you mentioned? I am quite new to Calibre, and cannot find it. Thanks again for your help!