Fix3r is a small utility for re-converting text in ID3 tags that were improperly converted to UTF-8 from something other than ISO 8859-1. This happens often with MP3 files containing only ID3v1 tags, since the specification states that only ISO 8859-1 is allowed for textual fields, leaving no option for the encoding of languages with non-Latin characters. The phenomenon of garbled text that results when these tags are displayed is called mojibake.

Fix3r is written in Cocoa, and presents a simple user-interface that gives the user a list of input character encodings to choose from. The tag is then re-encoded and saved as UTF-8, so that it will display correctly in other applications, such as iTunes. Below are examples of ID3 tags being displayed in iTunes before and after re-encoding:

Before	After

• Supports all character encodings offered by Mac OS X.
• Shows which fields have been modified, explicitly or implicitly.

Version 0.1.1

Fix3r Version 0.1.1 (Disk Image)

iTunes Script

"Open Using Fix3r" iTunes Script

Save this script into your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder and use it from the scripting menu in iTunes to open all selected tracks in Fix3r.

Version 0.1.1

• Fixed universal version of embedded ID3 framework.

Version 0.1

• First public release.

• Shows the file open dialog at launch, even if a file was opened via AppleScript.
• Can't read the Comments section from some files.
• Sometimes overwrites the Track field with a value of 32 (ASCII space).

Fix3r is maintained by Seth Kingsley, email <sethk@magnesium.net>.