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Hello everybody,
is it possible to change the character encoding for the song titles appearing in the Vlc playlist?
I have some songs with names containing special (non-English) characters, which are turned into ??? when I add these songs to the playlist.
Despite extensive Google and Vlc Forum search I could not find a solution.
Many thanks in advance.

mp3?

Yes, mp3 files, that is files with names of the form:
<containing english and special characters>.mp3

The operating system can show the correct file names, but as soon these songs are added to the vlc playlist, their names (under "Title", the column on the left) become illegible.
The URI is of course also illegible (04%20%CE%B9 etc)

I very strongly suspect your files contain incorrectly coded meta data. VLC prefers to use meta data in the file over the file name, as far as the title is concerned.

It's easy to test: rename the file to abc.mp3 and see if the title shows as 'abc' or still the same gibberish.

@ Rémi Denis-Courmont:
Thank you very much for your suggestion, your first assumption was correct:

1. Vlc does not use the filename, but the metadata. When I change the file name to abc, the Title in the vlc playlist remains illegible, but when I change the metadata title to abc, it is abc that appears.

2. However the problem remains similar: the OS (Windows Vista) can show the metadata correctly. The problem is not corrupt metadata, but Vlc that applies the wrong character encoding for them. Is it possible to define the character encoding of Vlc for the metadata?

No, the problem is your tool is not encoding metadata correctly, and so taglib cannot decode it right. This is a frequent problem with stupid Windows programmers who cannot read the ID3 specification.

OK, I understand that you are right, but there is no simple way for me to change the metadata of the many files I have.
Is there any way to help taglib decode the metadata correctly?
I should be possible, since Windows has no problem showing the correct data.
Thank you.

No. The only way is to fix the meta data. There must be tools for this, but I don't know anyone in particular.

simple way for me to change the metadata of the many files I have.

On Windows Mp3tag can do this as you can create scripts for mass tagging.
For best compatibilty with any player and OS, make sure that "ID3v2.3 UTF-16" is selected in Tools -> Options -> Tags -> Mpeg

@ Lotesdelere:
Mp3tag read the original tags correctly and after pressing "save" (with the default options: ID3v2.3 UTF-16) it overwrote them in a way that now also the vlc player can decode them correctly. I do not know where the problem with the original tags and vlc lied, but now it is solved.
Thank you for your suggestion and thanks to everybody else who contributed to the solution.

Thumbs up for this post
Now my friends wouldn't ask me about the gibberish anymore

Another thumbs up! Awesome program and it completely solved the problem.

Can this be the same problem as this one?

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=150288