# \[X\] Wrong characters in ID3v1 when converting between codepages
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990
**Category:** No Bugs
**Created:** [November 2, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990 "2006-11-02T16:12:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@datahunter](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/datahunter)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/1 "2006-11-02T16:12:17Z")
When I choose my action to convert a Cyrillic code page (win1251) to UTF then all the characters are converted except the ID3v1 tags. Because the ID3v1 tag can't be in UTF encoding I think it makes no sense to try to convert these tag version (ID3v1). Although it works perfectly with the ID3v2 tags.
Can we perhaps have an option in which code page the ID3v1 tags should be written? Or exclude this version tags altogether? Or copy the ID3v2 tag contents to the ID3v1 tags optionally specifying the target encoding?
I think the current behavior regarding the win1251 -\> UTF conversion in ID3v1 tags is wrong.
What do you think?
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2006, 5:42pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/2 "2006-11-02T17:42:23Z")
ID3v1 tags can be ISO-8859-1 or in system codepage only - so this is no bug.
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### Author:  [@datahunter](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/datahunter)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2006, 8:05pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/3 "2006-11-02T20:05:02Z")
That's right. I don't know what is going on when I try to convert from win1251 -\> UTF but the result is the following:
ID3v1 tags become question marks (?????)
and
ID3v2 tags are correct in UTF (readable)
So the question is: at which point does it get incorrectly converted to question marks?
My assumption is that Mp3tag converts the characters in ID3v2 to UTF and then tries to convert the UTF characters to the ISO-8859-1 or to system code page. But it fails! Because the program doesn't know the real code page of the language used in UTF. The real problem is also the fact that i'm on a German Windows Operating System handling Russian characters.
So this is more a feature request.
I miss a way to define the code page used when converting from UTF to system code page. I want not the system code page but another one defined by me.
As I see it now
ID3v2: win1251 -\> UTF
ID3v1: UTF -\> system code page (german)
And I would like
ID3v2: win1521 -\> UTF
ID3v1: UTF -\> **win1251**
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/dano)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2006, 8:28pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/4 "2006-11-02T20:28:39Z")
The codepage number is **1251** and not 1521, right?
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### Author:  [@datahunter](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/datahunter)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2006, 8:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/5 "2006-11-02T20:47:22Z")
Yes, of course! That was a typo on my part! I have corrected the previous posts.
Thank you **dano** for your attention!
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### Author:  [@datahunter](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/datahunter)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2006, 10:44am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/6 "2006-11-04T10:44:55Z")
I have found a tool which does exactly what I want:
ID3iconv
[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zf/id3iconv/](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zf/id3iconv/)
It can be used to convert only the ID3v2 tags leaving the ID3v1 tags untouched or removing the v1 tags completely. I can also execute it multiple times on the files that were already converted and the Unicode encoding stays and is not disturbed to question marks (??????) as in Mp3tag.
Written in the Java language it can also run under Linux.
With some additional work it could also be used in batch processing on many files.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2018, 2:17pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/x-wrong-characters-in-id3v1-when-converting-between-codepages/3990/7 "2018-12-28T14:17:23Z")
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