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

[MiPi]

pokeefe0001: just look at private messages here, I have offered you solution for your specific case, which should solve your problem without need of deleting any metadata.

[Lowlander]

Tools > Advanced Tag Management > Clean ID3v2 tags cleans the ID3 version 2 tags from the file, not the database. To rewrite database values to the files you'd use Tools > Advanced Tag Management > Synchronize Tags.

[pokeefe0001]

pokeefe0001: just look at private messages here, I have offered you solution for your specific case, which should solve your problem without need of deleting any metadata.

Thank you. I will try what you sent. (I may not get to it today, though.)

Actually, your earlier suggestion of "Tools - Advanced tag management - Clean ID3v2 tags" seemed to work in a small test. I need to try it on a larger sample to see what data is lost. I may not lose anything critical since everything in the MM database was acquired by scanning the library. If I go through the earlier suggested process of updating the original MMW2 database I suspect I would have more data to lose.

[pokeefe0001]

pokeefe0001: just look at private messages here, I have offered you solution for your specific case, which should solve your problem without need of deleting any metadata.

Thank you. That solution worked I implemented your fix, ran a short test which looked good, and then rescanned the whole library. Everything is displayed correctly.

Thank you.

[mpetrox]

Sometimes it is a windows-10 problem. I had this problem and I found the following solution.
Check your mp3 file properties, ie right-click on a mp3 file and select properties. If the title and/or other info looks Chinese, then check the language settings of your pc as follows.
1. Open settings -> Language -> Click on “Administrative language settings”
2. In the section “Language for non-Unicode programs” check the setting. If it is different than the regional settings language, press “Change system locale” and set according to your locale
3. Try to Add/Rescan with some new mp3 files. If it is ok then clear the mediamonkey database from the mediamonkey menu -> File -> Clear Database, and then reload all mp3 from the beginning using Add/Rescan files to the Library

[SashaD3]

Oh man, the dreaded corrupted/mismatched character encoding issue! I've run into this with older files too—where the tag looks fine in one program (like an old version of MM or a simple viewer) but shows up as Chinese or weird junk in a newer one. It usually boils down to ID3v1 tags not supporting international characters correctly, and then a newer player misinterpreting the empty ID3v2 tag's encoding setting.

The dev (MiPi) hit the nail on the head: the files have data saved in ID3v1 using Windows-1250 encoding (for those diacritics like Č/š/Ž), but the ID3v2 tag is empty but set to UTF-16, which confuses MM4.

Since you can't touch the original library owner's PC, and you want to keep the data from the ID3v1 tags, your best bet is to find a way to force-migrate the data from v1 to v2 and set the correct encoding.
If you want an easy online fix for a batch of files without installing a new desktop app, sometimes using a web-based tag editor can do the v1-to-v2 conversion when you save, especially if it handles those encodings. It's a quick way to clean up the encoding errors without messing with the database upgrade path.

Good luck! This is a messy one.

[Peke]

The dev (MiPi) hit the nail on the head: the files have data saved in ID3v1 using Windows-1250 encoding (for those diacritics like Č/š/Ž), but the ID3v2 tag is empty but set to UTF-16, which confuses MM4.

Hmmm, can you send me few sample files DL links in PM so that I can check them out, specifically as I have number of tracks in Cyrillic Tags and MM previously preferred UTF8 over UTF-16/Windows 1250 (CE), but would like to confirm suspicions.

[pokeefe0001]

My memory is not to be trusted after 7 years, but I believe MiPi sent me a "trial" version of id3lib.dll. When MM ran with that dll it would correctly interpret ID3v1 tags containing Windows-1250 encoding. "Synchronize Tags" would then rewrite the MP3 metadata with valid ID3v2 tags. After that, the official MMW4 would correctly display the data.

There was some problem with the fix that caused problems for some users so the changed dll was never included in the official MM (as far as I know).

I may have a copy of the trial id3lib.dll somewhere, but I'm sure I should not give it out without permission.

[Peke]

Hi,
Thx for offer, I remember something like that and as it was isolated case at the time it was fixed for you. Lets see first what SashaD3 will send me.