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I'm trying to write a tool that requires to read mp3 tags. Currently, I use id3lib, but I have problems interpreting the text strings if they contains non-ASCII characters. I found out that even the commandline tools id3info that comes with libid3 has Problems with the tag. For my sample song (Artist: Die Ärzte; Title: Dinge von denen; Album: Geräusch), I get the following results when id3info, mp3info and exiftool. 

mischa@mischa-t420:~/workspace/mivabeing/miv/tests/data/mp3$ id3info song.mp3 
*** Tag information for song.mp3
=== TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): Gerdusch
=== TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Die Drzte
=== TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): Dinge Von Denen
=== TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 5
*** mp3 info
MPEG1/layer III
Bitrate: 192KBps
Frequency: 44KHz

mischa@mischa-t420:~/workspace/mivabeing/miv/tests/data/mp3$ mp3info song.mp3 
File: song.mp3
Title:   Dinge Von Denen                Track: 5
Artist:  Die �rzte
Album:   Ger�usch                       Year:  
Comment:                                Genre:  [255]

mischa@mischa-t420:~/workspace/mivabeing/miv/tests/data/mp3$ exiftool -json song.mp3 
[{
  "Album": "Geräusch",
  "Artist": "Die Ärzte",
  "Title": "Dinge Von Denen",
  .....
}]

id3info interprets "Ä" as "D" and "ä" as "d". mp3info interprets "Ä" and "ä" by "�". exiftool interprets "Ä" and "ä" correctly.

Am I using id3info incorrectly? Do you thing it is a bug in ID3lib? Do you known an alternative C / C++ library for mp3 tag retrieval?

Best regards Michael

BikingGlobetrotter
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  • I can confirm that mp3info (v0.8.5) on a windows commandline doesn't show the correct german vowels for the above song. At least, if you use the active codepage 850. If you tell me where I can find the "id3info" tool, I can check it too. – PeterCo Nov 08 '14 at 22:33
  • So, same problem as under linux. id3info is part of the libid3-tools package. Unfortunately, It seems that it is not available under windows – BikingGlobetrotter Nov 12 '14 at 03:13

0 Answers0