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Firstly only Windows 9x & ME are unable to display unicode characters correctly, Windows 2000, XP or Vista are required.
dBpowerAMP Release 11.5 or above is required to accurately show the tags below, if your filename has unicode characters dBpowerAMP Release 12 or above is required.
Often ID Tags are written incorrectly to audio files, if your ID Tags contain characters outside of the normal ANSI range (a-z) your ID Tag has to be able to support Unicode, for mp3 ID3v2 has the option to write Unicode tags, APE tags are Unicode, Ogg Vorbis Tags are Unicode and m4a tags are also unicode.
To Configure dBpowerAMP to write Unicode tags (in Release 11.5 and above) open 'dMC Configuration' >> dBpowerAMP Settings and select the mp3 ID Tag to write as ID3v2 Unicode.
Finally I have included here 5 files 4 are tagged correctly, one is not, you are able to download these files to check your Windows is setup with the correct fonts to display international characters (also to verify your dbpoweramp is able to display unicode characters).
First File 'mp3-Japanese-(kanji)' - text has no meaning, just shows characters
Tagged with APE2
Tagged with ID3v2 UTF-16
dBpowerAMP's Popup information should display:
2nd File 'mp3-greek-id-tag'
Tagged with APE2
Tagged with ID3v2 UTF-16
dBpowerAMP's Popup information should display:
3rd File 'mp3-greek-id-tag-nouni' this file is tagged incorrectly, it is tagged using ID3v2 non unicode, meaning the Greek characters are stored in the upper ANSI section which is reliant on your code page, these tags are useless (cannot be transfered to unicode), display of tag is subject to certain fonts being used (which are different the world over)
Tagged with ID3v2 non unicode
dBpowerAMP's Popup information should display:
================================================== ========
Fixing on a Codepage
It is possible to tell Windows to map the stange characters to characters of your language, this will work for one language only and does not fix your files in anyway (for example send your greek files to a friend in the USA and his tags will be messed up), it is recommended that the 'Update Tag' utility codec is used to read the non-unicode tags (and map them to your code page, then write them out as unicode tags).
I Windows XP select Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Regional and Language Options >> Advanced:
Set the language to your own language. Note complex languages such as Japanese will only map so far to the limited characters in an codepage.
================================================== ========
Should your dBpowerAMP not show the correct characters for the above files, you must install international fonts into Windows, for Windows XP select Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Regional and Language Options >> Languages:
dBpowerAMP Release 11.5 or above is required to accurately show the tags below, if your filename has unicode characters dBpowerAMP Release 12 or above is required.
Often ID Tags are written incorrectly to audio files, if your ID Tags contain characters outside of the normal ANSI range (a-z) your ID Tag has to be able to support Unicode, for mp3 ID3v2 has the option to write Unicode tags, APE tags are Unicode, Ogg Vorbis Tags are Unicode and m4a tags are also unicode.
To Configure dBpowerAMP to write Unicode tags (in Release 11.5 and above) open 'dMC Configuration' >> dBpowerAMP Settings and select the mp3 ID Tag to write as ID3v2 Unicode.
Finally I have included here 5 files 4 are tagged correctly, one is not, you are able to download these files to check your Windows is setup with the correct fonts to display international characters (also to verify your dbpoweramp is able to display unicode characters).
First File 'mp3-Japanese-(kanji)' - text has no meaning, just shows characters
Tagged with APE2
Tagged with ID3v2 UTF-16
dBpowerAMP's Popup information should display:
2nd File 'mp3-greek-id-tag'
Tagged with APE2
Tagged with ID3v2 UTF-16
dBpowerAMP's Popup information should display:
3rd File 'mp3-greek-id-tag-nouni' this file is tagged incorrectly, it is tagged using ID3v2 non unicode, meaning the Greek characters are stored in the upper ANSI section which is reliant on your code page, these tags are useless (cannot be transfered to unicode), display of tag is subject to certain fonts being used (which are different the world over)
Tagged with ID3v2 non unicode
dBpowerAMP's Popup information should display:
================================================== ========
Fixing on a Codepage
It is possible to tell Windows to map the stange characters to characters of your language, this will work for one language only and does not fix your files in anyway (for example send your greek files to a friend in the USA and his tags will be messed up), it is recommended that the 'Update Tag' utility codec is used to read the non-unicode tags (and map them to your code page, then write them out as unicode tags).
I Windows XP select Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Regional and Language Options >> Advanced:
Set the language to your own language. Note complex languages such as Japanese will only map so far to the limited characters in an codepage.
================================================== ========
Should your dBpowerAMP not show the correct characters for the above files, you must install international fonts into Windows, for Windows XP select Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Regional and Language Options >> Languages:
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