Fix Character Encoding

Repair audio tags that display as garbled or unreadable characters.

The Fix Character Encoding function corrects metadata that was saved using the wrong character encoding, the classic cause of "mojibake", where non-Latin characters appear as question marks or random symbols. If you aren't sure which encoding was used originally, it may take a little trial and error. Keep Preview on so you can see exactly what the function is doing before saving.

Metadatics Fix Character Encoding window

Example: Restoring Korean Tags

Below is a file that was saved with the incorrect character encoding. The Track Title and Artist appear as unreadable symbols:

Audio tags showing garbled characters before correction

The correct character encoding for this file turned out to be Korean (Mac OS):

Character encoding set to Korean Mac OS in the Fix Character Encoding window

After applying the function, the characters display correctly:

Audio tags with correct Korean characters after applying the fix

Tip: If you aren't sure which encoding to pick, try a few common ones for the language you suspect (for example, Shift-JIS for Japanese, GB18030 for Simplified Chinese, Windows-1251 for Russian/Cyrillic) and use Preview to see which one produces readable text.

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