If you having problems with utf-8 you should check runtime-conf.xml file for settings. You should add set names decleration.
<connection>
<dsn>mysql:host=localhost;dbname=cms</dsn>
<user>root</user>
<password>1234</password>
<settings>
<setting id="charset">utf8</setting>
</settings>
<options>
<option id="MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND">SET NAMES utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci</option>
</options>
</connection>
End regenerate php configration file
propel-gen convert-conf
