I have myself a (large) number of files all tagged with who knows what character sets... some work in windows when not in the locale of origin, some don't. Is there a way to batch convert all the contents of the id3 tags to the unicode character set?
MP3tag writes tags according to your settings in Options:Mpeg.
So if you cut and paste the tags the tags are rewritten in the set character set.
There is no translation, though, form any arbitrary character set to unicode (like e.g. ASCII to unicode). SO you will most certainly be left with some strange looking characters.
seems that just resaving the existing tags (while in the default locale of the origin language) with the unicode options set properly will fix the non unicode tag entries (so far it's been working) I tested this by copying the files to another computer not set in the same system locale and they displayed fine.
There's also an Action [Alt+5] "Convert Codepage" for that.
how do I do that though?
and what is the best way to do this? cut and paste? simple "resave"? or "convert codepage" action?
I have lots of id3v2.3 tags and I want them all to be UTF-16. I have the column in place showing me what isn't UTF-16; and so I can sort that column, select all the problem children, and then 'make the fix' but I just want to be sure I am making the optimal fix, and doing it properly.
thx!
I'd say "copy&paste" with the special functions of the files list context menu ("Copy Tag", "Paste Tag")
If you have set File>Options>Mpeg to V2.3 UTF-16 then the pasting will insert the correct character codes.
And the copying, obviously, means additional data security if something should go wrong: you do not cut the tags and leave bare files but you paste the new information.
Also, the program MP3diags has a reapir function to convert the character coding, but it takes a long time to read the files.
thx for the reply.
what I ended up doing, was telling the options to "preserve" the file modified dates, and then just simply highlighting the problem children, and then clicking the "save" button.
this seemed to just change them all to UTF-16 without making any other changes.
thx for the help!
EDIT: