Remove DRM from the vitalbook .vbk format for converting ebook/reading w/ebook reader

[WheezyE]

Hi, just wondering if anyone's delt with one of these before.

http://www.vitalsource.com/software/vbk/

I've already done a google and forum search. Also, just as a potentially useless tidbit, using a hex editor on my .vbk file shows some ascii strings including JFIF (starting at address 6decimal) and AppleMark (starting at address 24decimal) k bye

[WheezyE]

So it turns out that VitalSource books are printable. I captured the printer output with Adobe PDF "printer" (although there are several other programs out there for this -- including many free ones). However, my new PDF was in raster form and thus not searchable. I opened the PDF with ABBYY Fine Reader, did OCR, then saved a new PDF with ascii text underneath the raster pages. The original .vbk file was 13 megs. After tweaking with the output compression settings on ABBYY and saving a few drafts, I produced a PDF of what I consider identical quality (checked with zooming and I have a pretty good eye for colors and detail) for 15 megs.

Ta-da!

[Apprentice Alf]

The VitalSource Bookshelf software allows you to print your book, but only 5 pages at a time. On the surface this would seem to foil the print-to-PDF method, however using some AppleScript magic we can have their own software do all the work for us

You will need a computer running MacOS in order to do this, however the resulting PDF will work on any computer. There are VMWare images of MacOS available online if you don't have a Mac. The AppleScript code below will dump the entire ebook out into a bunch of pdfs, each containing 5 pages each. We can then easily merge them together to create one DRM-free PDF containing all the pages.

1. Open your ebook up in the VitalSource app.
2. Load up AppleScript and paste in the following code:
   
   

   set totalPages to 340
   set startPage to 0
   set authorName to "DMT"
   
   tell application "VitalSource Bookshelf"
           activate
           repeat with theIncrementValue from startPage to totalPages - 1 by 5
                   if (theIncrementValue = 0) then
                           set thisValue to "a"
                   else
                           set thisValue to theIncrementValue
                   end if
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke "p" using command down
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke thisValue as string
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke tab
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke theIncrementValue + 5 as string
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke tab
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke return
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke return
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke "p" using command down
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke theIncrementValue as string
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke tab
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke tab
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke authorName
                   tell application "System Events" to keystroke return
                   delay 7
           end repeat
   end tell

   Did you notice how we even took away the sides of our sexy ASCII art just so you would have hassle-free copy+paste?
   
3. Change the totalPages to the number of pages, and authorName to whatever you want that field set to in the pdf.
4. The delay of 7 seconds is quite conservative, this should do nicely for most people. If your computer is really fast then you can probably lower it a bit, but if the saving of any one pdf takes more than the delay then the script will break and you'll have to manually stop it. If this happens just set the startPage to the Next page you don't have. Pages are saved starting from 0 (page 0 is called "a" in the app, fuck knows why) and up in increments of 5, so you'll end up with 0.pdf, 5.pdf,10.pdf, etc etc. So if it breaks and you have to re-start it, the number you start it from will always be either 0 or a multiple of 5.
5. So now you have your pdfs, time to join them together. If you want to do this on MacOS, install the textlive-context port with:
   

   # port install texlive-context

   If you want to merge them on a ubuntu or debian linux box, then you want to do:
   

   # apt-get install context

   Make sure all the pdfs are in one directory, then cd into that directory and type:
   # texexec --pdfarrange --result all.pdf `ls -1 *.pdf |sort -n`

This will get you a low quality .pdf file with a disclaimer at the top of every page.

[violetnight]

Hello,

I know this thread is a bit old, but I'm now frustratingly faced with a VBK textbook I need to print. I have tried the script, but for some reason I have to manually save to PDF each time it prints the next ten pages (my text allows 10 pages). I don't have a printer installed on my Mac, only the "save as PDF" option.

I have a screen shot of what I mean here:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/SX...w=w485-h371-no

I feel like I'm missing something here. Can anyone help me to figure out how to get the automated print thing to work? I would be eternally grateful!

[daphnis]

I have created a macro on the Mac that will convert VBK to PDF. It uses the program Keyboard Maestro and was developed with version 7. VitalSource Bookshelf version 6.6 was also used to develop the workflow. All this was done on 10.10.4 (Yosemite).

The workflow will loop through a printing cycle and print the maximum number of pages that are allowed by that publication. There are several things that need to be specified manually, and those are in the color red. Those in orange may or may not need to be changed; it's up to you to test and find out.

The main thing to customize in addition to the steps in red or orange is the number of repeat cycles to run. The "Repeat Actions" step loops through the actions to print in blocks of X number. Determine how many times to repeat by <Total number of pages that are specified with integers> divided by <Max Number of pages to print in each run>. For example, if there are 180 pages that are numbered (doesn’t include pages that are numbered with Roman numerals), and you can print a maximum of 10 pages at a time, then set the Repeat action to 18 times. Note that if the number of pages isn’t even divisible, then repeat to the highest possible number, then you’ll have to manually print the excess both after this number, and before if the book uses Roman numerals.

I have used this to convert about 2,000 pages into PDFs, and I hope it helps someone else in the future.

[violetnight]

Thanks, daphnis, I can't wait to try it!

[xCake]

Originally Posted by daphnis

I have created a macro on the Mac that will convert VBK to PDF. It uses the program Keyboard Maestro and was developed with version 7. VitalSource Bookshelf version 6.6 was also used to develop the workflow. All this was done on 10.10.4 (Yosemite).

The workflow will loop through a printing cycle and print the maximum number of pages that are allowed by that publication. There are several things that need to be specified manually, and those are in the color red. Those in orange may or may not need to be changed; it's up to you to test and find out.

The main thing to customize in addition to the steps in red or orange is the number of repeat cycles to run. The "Repeat Actions" step loops through the actions to print in blocks of X number. Determine how many times to repeat by <Total number of pages that are specified with integers> divided by <Max Number of pages to print in each run>. For example, if there are 180 pages that are numbered (doesn’t include pages that are numbered with Roman numerals), and you can print a maximum of 10 pages at a time, then set the Repeat action to 18 times. Note that if the number of pages isn’t even divisible, then repeat to the highest possible number, then you’ll have to manually print the excess both after this number, and before if the book uses Roman numerals.

I have used this to convert about 2,000 pages into PDFs, and I hope it helps someone else in the future.

I tried using it, but it was just too confusing for me. I'm not very tech-savvy. Also, VitalSource caught on to this 'bypass' so they changed the maximum allowed number of pages to print to 2 pages.

Sigh... I just wanted to view the book on my Kobo e-reader... What a bunch of assholes.

[jccalhoun]

I found someone's github with a method to directly convert the books to epub: https://github.com/GMMan/Extractor.epub
However, it doesn't work on the current version of the vitalsource software. To get it to work on Windows you need to uninstall the current version install the old version from their site that is indicated as being for XP and Vista: https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/e...wnload-Options (works fine on Win10)

Apparently it works through the vitalsource program allowing files to interact with each other so someone made up an epub that can extract the actual files from inside the vbk files. I successfully converted 4 out of the 5 books I tried. One wouldn't work but I'm not sure if it is my fault or not.

[penguinman]

I have tried downloading the pub from github, but when I try to sideload it, it doesn't work.