Fixing mp3s with messed up file-info?

[HerrPetersen]

I downloaded a bunch of Chinese mp3s. My music-player foobar plays them just fine. While most of the filenames are fine, the info in the files seem to be messed up quiet often. Example:

File:

01.赤裸裸 (displays fine)

Artist Name : Ö£¾û

Track Title : 01.³àÂãÂã

Album Title : ǧìû¾«Ñ¡

This can be fixed with the DimSum programm/the chinesetool.eu website to

Artist Name : 郑钧

Track Title : 01.赤裸裸

Album Title : 千禧精选

However fixing hundreds of files like this is too time-consuming.

Has anybody some knowledge on how to do this?

I also have a bunch of filenames that are messed up like the mp3-tags above - any solutions here?

Edit: with some more searching I found this:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/1811-chinese-audio-books5&highlight=fix+mp3

However there is no real answer provided so I guess it makes sense to leave this thread open/merge with the other one.

[roddy]

Try something like this - export the tag info to a csv file, copy and paste out the broken bits, fix in Dim Sum, paste back, import back into the actual files. Pretty sure I've done something similar, albeit years ago.

[HerrPetersen]

That was quick! Thanks a bunch - will check it out.

[roddy]

No worries. There are similar programs specifically for working with filenames that would let you copy and paste those in and out in bulk, I remember using one when I needed to convert hundreds of Chinese character filenames to pinyin or something similar.

[c_redman]

I see this a lot in downloaded music. I think it's because the files are generally shared among people all using the default same regional encoding (GB or Big5) instead of UTF-8, so it's only noticed on a machine with a different default.

There may be other tagging programs that can do this in bulk, but I second mp3bookhelper as a great program that's fairly easy to work with. The latest version is 5 years old, but it works so well and has so many features that I haven't wished for anything else or found a bug after 6 years of using it.And the help file is great also.

You may not need to import and export the tags; if they are just wrongly encoded GB or Big5, there is a tag manipulator within the program to do it. The procedure to do this is approximately:

- First, make a backup copy of your files until you're familiar with the program

- drag the top level directory into the window. The files should show up, with the tags

- change the Set ID3 button from v1.1 to v2.3. ID3v1 is old, doesn't support a lot of features like fee text genre and long text fields (and apparently UTF8 as I'm testing this out now) and most recent music players support v2 well. In fact, if you set the button to v2.3 and the info fields are all populated, you can just delete the v1 tags (via the Tags menu). If the v2 tags are all missing, I recommend "copy v1 tags to v2, and work with those as a starting point.

- Only check the checkboxes for the fields you want to fix: Artist, Album, Title, etc. At this time, you can set other tags, like the year and genre, or autonumber the track sequence.

- For the broken fields, enter the special mask presets for fixing them. For example, to fix a title from GB to UTF8, enter "

<936>" as the field. Or, to change the the Album from Big5, enter "<950>" in the Album field.

- Look at the "current mask [AT] yields..." information after you enter it. If it looks like plausible Chinese text, then this will fix it. Otherwise, switch between 936 and 950. This has always worked for me, so if you still can't get the field converted, it may be too corrupted to recover.

- Click on the Preview button to see the before and after data.If it looks ok, click on "Set for All", otherwise click on Reload to go back and fix it some more.

Once you click on Set for All, the files have been written. If all looks ok in your mp3 player, you can delete the backup copy.

I have a sample screenshot below. Notice that in addition to the corrupted tags, I've also set the year field, which was blank, and entered my own genre (the original was 亚洲).

[HerrPetersen]

Thanks for sharing, c_redman. I tried out some stuff - even managed to export and import the tags - however after 30 minutes or so I got frustrated and postponed it. (and I fear I might have destroyed some information in the process).

So thanks for giving me some more detail - will check it out.

Do you have any recommendations for a batch filerenamer - I downloaded a bunch, but none supported export/import of filenames.

[c_redman]

If the filenames have the same encoding problem, mp3BookHelper can also fix those (e.g., "<950>"). When you click Set for All, it will rename them. If you only need to rename some of them, that's what those checkboxes next to the individual files are for.

Also check out the Move tab. In that tab, you can also reorganize the whole directory structure based on the tags of any field.

[flameproof]

Is that a unicode in Win Xp problem?

Have you tried to open your MP3 player via AppLocale with Chinese character environment preset? That worked great on the old non-unicode versions of QQ.