First step: determine what encode the metadata is written?
Install Exif reader
sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl
Show exif information you want to play on VLC.
exiftool filename
Sample output:
ExifTool Version Number : 12.49
File Name : 10 - グラスホッパー.flac
--cut--
File Type : FLAC
File Type Extension : flac
MIME Type : audio/flac
--cut--
Track Number : 10
Discnumber : 1
Title : グラスホッパー
Artist : スピッツ
Album : ハチミツ
Genre : Unknown
Date : 1995-09-20
--cut--
Artistsort : Spitz
Discid : 9c0a320b
Musicbrainz Discid : KcCfHpYnqpWm4siIth0whkxTBEU-
Tracktotal : 11
Duration : 0:03:31
If you can read exif metadata normally in your terminal, then the metadata is written in Unicode. (check echo $LANG
) And also check the VLC font settings.
Otherwise, it is written in another character encode. In Japanese, it probably is in Shift-JIS or EUC.
Now save text of exiftool
exiftool filename > textfile.txt
Encode Shift-JIS (or EUC-JP 'eucjp') to Unicode UTF-8
iconv -f sjis -t utf8 textfile.txt
cat textfile.txt
If you see this file No Tofu characters then you can edit original exif with them.
For example:
exiftool -Title="グラスホッパー" -Artist="スピッツ" -Album="ハチミツ"
Let's play this song/video on VLC, see what is changed.