Some titles display as Chinese - how to fix? [#15147]

[pokeefe0001]

I'm running MM 4.1.20.1864 on Windows 10. After doing an Add/Rescan of a library, some of the titles show as Chinese characters. When the MP3 metadata for these files is displayed in Windows Explorer the "Title" field shows as blank (although viewing the metadada with something like HxD shows non-null data there). This same library loaded into a much older version of MediaMonkey (v2.?) running on Win7 does not have this problem. (I was told that nothing special was done during or after the load but I cannot verify that.)

The library contains Balkan music with titles transliterated from Cyrillic so I suspect the misdisplayed titles contain letters Č/č, Š/š, or Ž/ž but I haven't confirmed this. And I've read that this may be a Windows problem misinterpreting the character encoding.

In any case, I do not own the library so can't change the metadata of the files (even if there were an easy way to do this in bulk). Is there some way to change the way MediaMonkey interprets the encoding of title field of MP3 metadata? The library contains over 3000 files with many hundreds of them showing this symptom. A manual one-by-one solution is not feasible.

[Peke]

Hi,
I can help you with confirmation about "Č/č, Š/š, or Ž/ž" (Latin) as I use them natively both in Cyrilic and Latin charset.

Post screenshot of few files you think are wrong.

You can also send me a DL link to some of the files in PM.

[pokeefe0001]

Thank you for offering to help. I'm not sure I'm providing what you asked for but I'm providing things that might help.
I copied 5 MP3 files into their folder - 3 that display incorrectly and 2 that display "correctly". (I picked 5 Serbian pieces because of your location.) Of the bad ones, 2 probably have a title "U Šest" and 1 probably has a title "Mileševska" (or perhaps "Mileševska Kolo"). The 2 that display correctly have titles (mis)spelled without the haček: "Senjacko Kolo" and "Popvicanka".

I failed in trying to build an img link in this posting but you can find a screen capture of MediaMonkey's display of these 5 files at https://app.box.com/s/z91tcldwp1ywivvrmekwjhxfzc6qfyu3

You can find a zipped copy of the folder at https://app.box.com/s/z91tcldwp1ywivvrmekwjhxfzc6qfyu3

[Peke]

Hi,
Your assumption is correct, but I would need actual files so that I can check Charset Encodings in tags itself to see what went wrong.

FYI in case of "Mileševska" following by "Kolo" (Descriptive word for function/type) in singular then "Mileševska" always goes to "Mileševsko" also singular, on the other hand if you use "Mileševska" in Plural then descriptive word also needs to be i plural eg. "Kola". To sum "Mileševsko Kolo" Singular music piece and "Mileševska Kola" Plural multiple music pieces (Mix, joined together,...). Usually Descriptive word Singular/plural determent by A, E, I, O, U ending of word before it.

Example: "Upravo šetam kroz BeogradskU ulicU" -> "Just walking thru Belgrade Street" and "Upravo šetam kroz beogradskE ulicE" -> "Just walking thru Belgrade Streets" and so on ...

[pokeefe0001]

Sorry. I miscopied the link to the zip file.
It is https://app.box.com/s/jw7vckhbi21g2huoezpmwzfeugrqk8v5

Regarding my grammatical error, I'm afraid the people that built, and most of the people that use this library do not speak Serbian (or any other Balkan language except for a smattering of Bulgarian). The name on that MP3 file and the MP3 metadata was a misspelling of the (apparently grammatically incorrect) name on an old vinyl recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsyhtY03WB0

Based on what you said, and not inserting an extra "s", the track should have been "Mileševko Kolo" (which would not have displayed at all in my MediaMonkey).

[Peke]

Hi,
This is another story that only after Windows 95 Pan European version we had adopted widely used standardized charset and even today still many of us use plain Latin characters without diacritics due the better filename sorting and thus such errors like this.

And yes that grammatical error is common even in some parts are commonly used in language (many say that Serbian grammar is very very hard to learn), I just wanted to let you know how to recognize official errors, even if in theory both are correct. In English my nickname would need to be written more like "Péké" but in Serbian it is written as "Peke" due the different pronounce of letters.

Example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4ZeGXFO2sQ is not called "Ansambl Urošević - Miloševska Kolo" but "Ansambl Urošević - Što Grad Smederevo" and "Miloševsko kolo" is actually specific music sub genre of Serbian Folk dance https://translate.google.com/translate? ... t=&act=url if you like Serbian Folklore dance music.

Anyway I analyzed your files and it looks that hey have corrupted header and data. We will analyze further if there is anything that can be done.

[pokeefe0001]

Thank you for the time you are putting in on this. I believe that most, if not all, of the music in this library was copied from old records and tapes. Much of that copying happened around 2008. The MP3 metadata must have been entered manually. I have no idea what tool was used. It's very possible incorrect header information was created.

As I said in my original posting, MediaMonkey v2 running on Win7 displays correct (or at least readable) titles so I have hope there is some way to get MediaMonkey V4 to also display the titles.

I occasionally have access to the old system with the old MediaMonkey. Is there a way to get it to copy the library with new, correct header information? If so, I might be able to convince the library's owner to use the corrected version.

[Peke]

Hi,
On System that have working MMW2.x you need to upgrade to MMW3.x in order to have converted DB to SQL Lite and from That You should be able to Upgrade to MMW4.x

Locate "MediaMonkey.mdb" on that system and Backup that folder just in case.

Install MMW3.x into Separate folder eg c:\MMW3 and let it import library.

If All goes well you should be able to access files.

Then Install MMW4.x into C:\MMW4 and wait till it imports library.

That should complete upgrade and you should be able to use all the files and be able to save sync tags from Library into files itself.

And please Backup, Backup as much as you can. There is no reverse once you start to work with actual files.

FYI My library is 14 and Half years old.

[pokeefe0001]

I'm afraid your suggestion is slightly problematic. The owner of the library does not want to update specifically because he does not want the database updated to SQL Lite. (I don't know his reasons for this.) For that reason I cannot touch the current MediaMonkey installation on his computer. I can copy the MM database to my computer and do anything I want with it.

I did try the database upgrade on my PC once, but it failed. I didn't know I had to do it on v3. I've seen version 3 available from 3rd party sites but I typically don't trust such sites. Are back releases of MediaMonkey officially available?

[Peke]

Hi,
Instructions on upgrade http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... e/View/56/

MMW2.x: https://filehippo.com/download_mediamonkey/2310/

MMW3.x: http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... monkey-325

That is why I suggested no uninstalls just installing in Separate folders so that you can easily revert back if something goes wrong even you have backed up everything.

You can try to do it on your PC with his MediaMonkey.mdb and if all goes well then you should try to Locate files on your pc prior to syncing Tags.

[pokeefe0001]

I'll try the database conversion this weekend (and the database conversion is a good idea regardless of my metadat problem), but I just realized I may be on the wrong path.

I found and (after making sure I PC had a recent backup) tried an online MP3 tag repair program. It found nothing wrong and displayed the title of the file as "U Šest". Windows Explorer display nothing, MediaMonkey displays Chinese characters, and my browser displays the correct title ... all sourced on the same MP3 metadata. I vaguely remember reading that there is a character encoding that was dropped in Windows 10. If the Windows 7 equivalent of File Explorer (which I think was just called "Explorer") correctly displays the title then this problem probably has nothing to do with MediaMonkey at all. It's a Windows character display problem.

[MiPi]

These files contain title only in ID3 tag v1, but this version of tag does not have standard for international characters, it should contain only pure ASCII. That is why it is displayed problematically, MM does not know, which character encoding is used. I've entered this to our bug database and I will look, whether we can handle it better: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15147

[pokeefe0001]

These files contain title only in ID3 tag v1, but this version of tag does not have standard for international characters, it should contain only pure ASCII. That is why it is displayed problematically, MM does not know, which character encoding is used.

That certainly explains everything I see. Windows' File Explorer does not display the data at all because it contains invalid data. An MP3 diagnosis tool I tried displays the Title data but with a blank for the š. The old WWW2 displays the titles because its Tag display option is set to "UTF-16". The equivalent option in MMW4 is "ASCII + UTF-16 (when needed)". I guess it thinks UFT-16 is not needed if ID3v1 doesn't support it.

Actually, I'm not sure about what I just said. The Tag option seems to be for saving MP3 metadata rather than for displaying it.

But now what? Is there any utility that will convert ID3v1 tags to ID3v2 while keeping the data that is present but invalid for ID3v1? I see a lot of tools mentioned on the web, but most are over 10 years old and none mention I've seen actually mention what is done with invalid data.

[MiPi]

I have analyzed this more deeply and the main problem is, that the files have mismatched ID3 v1 and ID3 v2 tags. They contain empty title tag v2, but with encoding set to UTF16, and title is saved to v1 tag, but saved as Windows-1250 ASCII. It is in fact bug in MM, it should not leave encoding from v2, if the tag content is read from v1 (because v2 is empty). I will fix this for the next version of MM, it is rare situation, you are probable the first who experienced this.

One easy solution for you could be Tools - Advanced tag management - Clean ID3v2 tags. It will clean ID3v2 tags and re-scanning will read your ID3v1 tag correctly (and subsequent synchronizing tags will write ID3v2 correctly). But I am not sure, if this is usable for you, as this will delete all tags, that are written to ID3v2 and not to ID3v1 tag (like composer, custom tags, etc). Cleaning ID3v1 tags will fix this too, but it will delete e.g. the titles, as they are written to v1 only. Or you can wait for the fixed version.

[pokeefe0001]

Thank you for your time working on this.

Please forgive me but I really don't know MediaMonkey or MP3 metadata at all. I use MediaMonkey, but I don't know how it works. In "Tools - Advanced tag management - Clean ID3v2 tags", does that just clean the MM database or does it actually rewrite the MP3 files with cleaned up metadata?

I have no idea how to parse the ID3 format so I'm not sure of the significance of what I see. When I view the MP3 files with a display tool (HxD) I see the title in basic Latin characters (without diacritical marks) in the ID3 data. Is that the v1 tag data you mention? At the end of the file there is something just labeled TAG that contains the title with the diacritical marks (but still using the Windows-1250 code page).

Is there a tool that parses and displays MP3 metadata? It would help me understand your description of the problem.