How to play a movie with an external audio track in VLC

In a convenient context menu, you can select an audio track (for example, with different languages or dubbing from different studios). But this only works if all audio tracks are embedded in one video file.

But what if you want to play a video in VLC along with the audio in a separate file? VLC provides this functionality and you can play audio from an external file, but it is implemented in a very unintuitive way.

How to use audio from a separate file when playing a video in VLC

1. Launch VLC – it doesn’t matter whether you launch the media player by double-clicking on the video file or in another way (for example, from the Start menu or by clicking on the icon on the desktop or in the quick launch menu).

2. Then in VLC go to Menu: “Media → Open Multiple Files...”:

3. In the window that opens, click the “Add” button:

4. Select the desired video file and click the “Open” button.

5. Then check the “Show more options” checkbox:

6. Check the new box “Play another media synchronously (extra audio file, ...)”:

7. Click on the “Browse” button that appears:

8. In the new window, click on the “Add” button:

9. Select a file with an audio track and click the “Open” button.

10. Click the “Select” button.

11. Finally, click the “Play” button.

The video will start playing, but we're not done yet!

12. Right-click on the video, go to “Audio → Audio Track” in the context menu and select a new audio track – most likely it will be in last place.

Conclusion

An unusual quest, isn't it?

If you need to connect an additional subtitle file, you can do this while selecting video and audio files. But you can also do this in the context menu by right-clicking on the playing video. I wonder why they didn't add the same simple playback method for the audio track?