# Text Encoding

The ID3 specification uses ISO-Latin-1 as its 8 bit text encoding. In the past before UTF8 was supported, many people specified their mp3 fields in a variety of languages which contained characters not supported in ISO Latin-1. When these files are read by Yate, fields which specify an encoding of ISO Latin-1 may not display the correct characters if in fact they were not ISO Latin-1 characters.

Yate allows you to specify the original encoding and will attempt to re-encode the text according to that encoding. Note that if a field currently contains characters which cannot be represented in ISO Latin-1, no modifications will occur.

The re-encoding can be performed in the Multi Field Editor, via the Re-encode action function and via the Yate Transformations submenu in a text field's context menu.