Convert unicode tags to ascii?

[FuzzyLogic]

I discovered that my default player (Yamaha receiver) is not happy with unicode characters and can't display them properly. I have changed the tagging option from ID3v2.3 to ID3v2.3 (ascii only).

Is there something I need to do to update the tags and if so what?

[Zak]

Changing that option in the preferences won't have any effect on your existing tags until you do something that resaves the tag into the file.
For doing a lot of files, the Additional Tagging and Reporting Tools plugin has a Reencode tags command that might be suitable for this purpose.
I've never used it - I'm only guessing. You could try on a few test files to see if it does what you need.

Alternatively, mp3Tag also has an option to store tags using ASCII characters only, and can resave tags to a lot of files very quickly.

[sveakul]

I don't know if this can be done with MusicBee's tag tools, but the Kid3 external tagger (https://kid3.kde.org/) can retroactively change ID3v2.3 tags with UTF-16 text encoding to ISO-8859-1 (Extended ASCII) encoding "en masse."  The steps for that would be:

1.  In the Kid3 "Configure" options, under Tag 2/ID3v2 set text encoding to ISO-8859-1.

2.  Open the files into Kid3 and select those with UTF-16 encoding that you wish to change

3.  From the Kid3 Tools menu, choose "Apply Text Encoding"

4.  Hit the "Save" button.

For the changes to be reflected in MusicBee you would need to rescan the files.

As I see Zak just posted, taking a look at the plugin he mentions also sounds like a good bet.

[FuzzyLogic]

I looked at the plugin and mp3tag and mp3tag seems like it might be better. I've got 20K+ songs of which I don't know how many are affected. It would be nice if I could just load them all up and do the conversion. Any pointers as it's not obvious to me how to proceed.

[sveakul]

I gave you a step-by-step procedure on how to do this in Kid3, but somebody else is going to have to help with mp3tag as I don't use it.

[FuzzyLogic]

I will give it a try. Thanks

[sveakul]

Damn if I didn't keep my portable Mp3tag after all when I did my Windows 10 1909->2004 upgrade.  OK, so if you have Mp3tag, the operation would be:

1.  In mp3tag Options/Tags/Mpeg/Write, see that "ID3v2" and "ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1" are checked.

2.  Load and select the files you want to change in mp3tag

3.  Right-click the selection and choose "Tag Copy"

4.  Then with the same files selected, right-click and choose "Tag Paste"

5.  Done

Like I said, I normally don't use Mp3tag, so try this first on just a couple of files to be sure it works the way you wanted.  Seems fine here.

[FuzzyLogic]

Thanks. I've got a few options to try.

[Zak]

2.  Load and select the files you want to change in mp3tag
3.  Right-click the selection and choose "Tag Copy"
4.  Then with the same files selected, right-click and choose "Tag Paste"

You don't even need to do that in mp3Tag.

You can just set the tag preference, load all 20,000 files into it and hit the floppy disc icon to resave them all.

Before you make 20,000 mistakes, OP should also consider what they want to happen to their Unicode characters.
In my (very) quick test, it appears Mp3tag just replaces them all with question marks, which may not be desirable.
In which case you might want to run some other actions to replace them with something else first.

[FuzzyLogic]

I did a trial and got mixed results. So is there a way to do a search in MusicBee for non-ASCII characters? It might be better to address this manually.