Japanese text is gibberish in iTunes Music library

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Level 1

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Japanese text is gibberish in iTunes Music library

Hello,
Problem is: Songs w/Japanese text (Kanji, Kana) as artists and/or title names look like gibberish in my iTunes Music library (viewing songs on the hard drive).

On a new WinXP PC I loaded iPod+iTunes from CD on computer. Songs play fine in iTunes. Japanese text looks fine in Windows\My Music folder. Japanese text looks fine in iPod device. With iPod connected to PC, I can view my iPod songs inside the iTunes window and the Japanese songs text Kanji looks great. (Yet if I look at same songs located on the PC using the iTunes program, they look bad).

I removed iTunes from PC, then downloaded it from the Japan Apple.com site; no change in problem. Help!

Window's settings are:
--WinXP is US English, Control Panel region is US English, Window's Far East language support is enabled. but language for non-Unicode programs is Japanese (other Japanese software looks fine), Japanese IME is enabled
-- Internet Explorer's Language Preferences is set for Japanese 1st, English 2nd.

Thanks in advance!
Erin W

Win XP SP2, Windows XP

Posted on Dec 17, 2006 6:22 AM

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Answer 1

polydorus

Level 6

11,967 points

Dec 17, 2006 7:15 AM in response to Erin W

Have you tried highlighting a problem track in you library and then going to
Advanced>Convert ID3 Tags...
Then checking tne Reverse Unicode box.

I have no idea if it will work, but might be worth a try.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,240 points

Dec 17, 2006 7:43 AM in response to Erin W

language for non-Unicode programs is
Japanese

You problem is a puzzling, because if things look ok on the iPod, your id3 tags are presumably ok. I'm wondering if the setting mentioned above could be a factor? I kind of doubt it, but you might try changing it and restarting to see if anything changes.

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Answer 3

Erin W Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 19, 2006 1:14 AM in response to Erin W

I tried the "convert ID3 tags >> Reverse Unicode" option on a few songs. It only caused the gibberish song names and titles to change to different gibberish. 😟

The odd thing is that I have some songs that had english in some ID3 tags (such as "name") and Japanese in other ID3 tags (such as "artist") and for those, the Japanese text looks great. And yet some song text doesn't.

I tried deleting a few songs from the iTunes Music library, then click-and-drag the songs from Windows' My Music folder into the iTunes program. It adds it back with the Japanese text still unreadable, same as before.

I don't know what else to do. I've searched the discussions database here and found instances of the same problem but no fixes.

Thanks for the help though, and I'd be glad to see any other ideas.

Erin

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Answer 4

polydorus

Level 6

11,967 points

Dec 19, 2006 4:52 AM in response to Erin W

Oh well, I guess the reverse unicode thing was worth a try. 🙂

It's all very mystifying.

Presumably these are tracks you saved with some other program? I wonder if there is a problem with the ID3 tag version, but it is odd that the iPod copes OK.

You should be able to see version on the Summary tag of Get Info if the track was imported with another program.

You said you loaded iTunes from a CD, but you didn't say what version you were on.
Help>About iTunes.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,240 points

Dec 19, 2006 7:24 AM in response to Erin W

The odd thing is that I have some songs that had
english in some ID3 tags (such as "name") and
Japanese in other ID3 tags (such as "artist") and for
those, the Japanese text looks great. And yet some
song text doesn't.

That would seem to indicate botched encoding for the ones that don't display right. Could you copy paste an example of the gibberish here?

What happens if you try to copy/paste the good text you can see when viewing the song on your iPod into the info fields for the same song on iTunes?

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