caaalebbb

Q: Problem with Special characters (e.g. ä, ö, ü, ß) in Movement Name tag

Special characters (e.g. ä, ö, ü, ß)  display as "�" or "?" in (only in) the Movement Name tag—there is, however, no such problem in the song name tag.

 

Just one example (though any track with special characters has this problem), here is a name of a piece:

 

Slavonic Dances, Op. 46: No. 5: Skočná: Allegro vivace

 

I want to utilize the new Work/Movement feature (rather than the mere "Grouping" feature). So I set the work as:

 

Slavonic Dances, Op. 46

 

and I set the movement to 5 (of 8), and I set the name to

 

Skočná: Allegro vivace.

 

This works when I manually enter the track name. But if I right click the track and go to "get info", the movement name reverts to:

 

     Skoc�n�: Allegro vivace

 

Or, if I simply play the track, the movement name changes to:

 

Skoc?n?: Allegro vivace

 

No such problem occurs with, for example, the album tag (if the album title has special characters) or the song name tag. Surely this is a problem. Is there a fix? If not, is there a way to report this?

 

[I'm using Sierra, but I had the problem with El Capitan as well]

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015), iOS 10

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 8:38 AM

Close

Q: Problem with Special characters (e.g. ä, ö, ü, ß) in Movement Name tag

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Sep 21, 2016 9:01 AM in response to caaalebbb
    Level 9 (54,101 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 21, 2016 9:01 AM in response to caaalebbb

    The only thing I can think of to suggest is to make sure your various language settings are correct in iTunes and for your computer.

     

    Am I correct in that this tag is a new feature with iTunes 12.5?  I suspect there is something strange happening with the character encoding set.  I don't think standard ID3 tags have a movement field so this tag is exclusive to iTunes and the character set may work differently to those embedded in the actual files the way other tags are.

     

    http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

  • by caaalebbb,

    caaalebbb caaalebbb Sep 21, 2016 9:01 AM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 21, 2016 9:01 AM in response to Limnos

    I do not see iTunes specific language settings in the iTunes preferences. My Macbook's general language settings are correct (German is, correctly, set to my second language).

     

    Note that the problem with special characters is restricted to the Movement Name tag—none of the other tags have this problem (also, I have no problems with special characters in any other contexts on my Macbook).

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Sep 21, 2016 9:03 AM in response to caaalebbb
    Level 9 (54,101 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 21, 2016 9:03 AM in response to caaalebbb
  • by caaalebbb,

    caaalebbb caaalebbb Sep 21, 2016 9:12 AM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iTunes
    Sep 21, 2016 9:12 AM in response to Limnos

    Thanks! – but the problem in the linked thread is not at all the problem I've described above. Unless I misunderstood what you were suggesting I try? Also, please note, the problem is not that special characters don't work in iTunes in general (they do work), the problem is only that special characters don't work correctly in (just) the Movement Name tag.

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Sep 21, 2016 7:03 PM in response to caaalebbb
    Level 9 (54,101 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 21, 2016 7:03 PM in response to caaalebbb

    I don't use iTunes 12.5 so I can't test any of this firsthand. What I am suggesting is that perhaps the regular iTunes features which operate with standard embedded tags can handle multiple character sets but the one for the new features is restricted to one character set.  Most of the basic character set such as UTF and ASCII come in different flavors but with a lot of overlap and perhaps the special feature will work with a different variant.  I recall having problems getting some files to sort in order and when I changed the character set all the album name tags appeared the same but then the album sorted properly.