# converting FROM UTF-8 (16)
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [September 26, 2017, 5:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385 "2017-09-26T17:07:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 5:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/1 "2017-09-26T17:07:26Z")
Hello!
I don't understand, how i can convert tag's charset from utf-8 (utf-16) to windows-1251?
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 5:09pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/2 "2017-09-26T17:09:18Z")
did you have a look at this topic:
[/t/2785/1](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/2785/1)
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 5:18pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/3 "2017-09-26T17:18:13Z")
Yes, I've read that topic, but when I turn on that option, I see the question marks in the tag.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 5:28pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/4 "2017-09-26T17:28:15Z")
> [@W0LF](#):
>
> Yes, I've read that topic, but when I turn on that option, I see the question marks in the tag.
Which program shows the question marks?
MP3tag should modify the character set only when it writes the tags but not when it reads them.
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 5:39pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/5 "2017-09-26T17:39:43Z")
> [@ohrenkino](#):
>
> Which program shows the question marks?
> MP3tag should modify the character set only when it writes the tags but not when it reads them.
It's mp3tag. Tomorrow I will post a screenshot and a video of my actions.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 5:48pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/6 "2017-09-26T17:48:34Z")
> [@W0LF](#):
>
> It's mp3tag. Tomorrow I will post a screenshot and a video of my actions.
Is this prior to or after saving the tags with MP3tag?
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 6:01pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/7 "2017-09-26T18:01:17Z")
> [@ohrenkino](#):
>
> Is this prior to or after saving the tags with MP3tag?
I have mp3 with Russian letters in tags in Unicode encoding. I need to convert the tags into Russian win-1251. I turn on the option "iso-8859" and in the list of songs, the question marks appear in the tags.
p.s. it is a google translate, sorry.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/8 "2017-09-26T18:10:05Z")
> [@W0LF](#):
>
> I have mp3 with Russian letters in tags in Unicode encoding. I need to convert the tags into Russian win-1251. I turn on the option "iso-8859" and in the list of songs, the question marks appear in the tags.
> p.s. it is a google translate, sorry.
Perhaps you try an action of the type "Convert code page" (see [https://docs.mp3tag.de/actions/convert-codepage)](https://docs.mp3tag.de/actions/convert-codepage)) to translate the codes.
Try it with a backuped, single file first to see what it does.
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 4:42am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/9 "2017-09-27T04:42:50Z")
[Video](https://youtu.be/VQKyEMfydS8)
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 4:48am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/10 "2017-09-27T04:48:13Z")
What I can see is that you have APE tags in your files.
Get rid of these tag versions first before you manipulate the id3v2 tags.
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 9:18am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/11 "2017-09-27T09:18:45Z")
Nope. Does not matter.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 9:41am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/12 "2017-09-27T09:41:18Z")
you could add a column with the value %\_id3v2\_character\_encoding%
just to make sure that the encoding has changed.
Then you should find out which code page your system is using and whether it has characters for the changed encoding.
Also: Win XP sometimes lacked the correct characters.
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:25am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/13 "2017-09-27T10:25:55Z")
> [@ohrenkino](#):
>
> you could add a column with the value %\_id3v2\_character\_encoding%
5th column on video and screenshot.
> [@](#):
>
> just to make sure that the encoding has changed.
It changes. See video.
> [@](#):
>
> you should find out which code page your system is using and whether it has characters for the changed encoding.
I think it Unicode by default. Or windows-1251.
> [@](#):
>
> Also: Win XP sometimes lacked the correct characters.
I use win7.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/14 "2017-09-27T15:19:33Z")
Watching the video, I noticed, that I tried it in a different way:
Load a file with the original encoding.
Set File\>Options\>Mpeg to write ISO-8859-1
Return to the files and select them.
Now press Ctrl-S to save the new encoding.
I can see that it has been done as I watch a column that shows the encoding.
The special characters (I have German umlauts) are still displayed.
BUT: when I now change the code page for e.g. TITLE to e.g. traditional Chinese, I get a ? for the umlaut as apparently this character has no match in the chinese character set.
Another experiment:
Take a file with UTF encoding.
Apply an action to convert the code page.
You will notice that any special character is now translated to that code page
Braitsa (Fantasiestück) becomes Braitsa (Fantasiestьck)
(the encoding stays at UTF)
If I now modify the settings for saving to ISO then the title becomes
Braitsa (Fantasiest?ck)
So, the code page translation always is relative to the OS code page, I think.
If no matching character is found in the current OS environment then you get a "?".
UTF-8 and ISO have only 8 bits to address a character which leads to 256 variations. This is not enough to cater for all the different languages.
UTF-16 provides 32767 possibilities. This is enough to provide characters for any language in the world.
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### Author:  [@W0LF](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/W0LF)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/converting-from-utf-8-16/19385/15 "2017-09-27T16:32:41Z")
EasyTAG and Tag&Rename do it correctly. But easytag have shitty interface, tag&rename is shareware, so I hope that the mp3tag will also do it correctly...