How to add audio with VLC player

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to make the audio file

VLC Media Player is a powerful and versatile tool, and while it’s primarily known as a media player, it also offers some basic functionalities for manipulating media files, including adding an external audio track to a video.¹

It’s important to understand VLC’s limitations in this context:

• Not a full-fledged video editor: VLC is not designed for precise audio/video synchronization, cutting, trimming, or adding multiple audio layers with fine control. For advanced editing, you’ll need dedicated video editing software.
• Temporary Playback vs. Permanent Merge: There are two main ways to “add” audio in VLC. One allows you to play a video with an external audio track temporarily. The other involves converting and saving a new file with the audio embedded, which re-encodes the video and can sometimes lead to quality loss or synchronization issues if not done carefully.²

Here’s how to do both:

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Method 1: Play Video with External Audio (Temporary)

This method lets you watch a video with a separate audio file playing alongside it.³ The audio isn’t permanently merged into the video file.

1. Open VLC Media Player.
2. Go to Media > Open Multiple Files… (or press Ctrl+Shift+O on Windows, Cmd+Shift+O on Mac).⁴
3. In the “Open Media” window, go to the File tab.⁵
4. Click the Add… button and select your video file.⁶
5. Check the box next to “Show more options” at the bottom left.⁷
6. Check the box next to “Play another media synchronously (extra audio file)”.
7. Click the Browse… button that appears next to “Extra media”.⁸
8. In the new “Open Media” window, click Add… again and select your audio file.⁹
9. Click Select in this second window.
10. Back in the first “Open Media” window, click Play.
11. Once the video starts playing, you might need to select the new audio track. Right-click anywhere on the video playback, go to Audio > Audio Track, and select the track that corresponds to your added audio file (it might be “Track 2” or have a name related to your audio file).¹⁰

Note: This is purely for playback. The original video file remains unchanged.

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Method 2: Merge Audio and Video (Convert and Save as a New File)

This method re-encodes your video file with the new audio track embedded. This will create a new video file.

1. Open VLC Media Player.
2. Go to Media > Convert / Save… (or Ctrl+R on Windows, Cmd+R on Mac).¹¹
3. In the “Open Media” window, go to the File tab.¹²
4. Click the Add… button and select your video file.
5. Check the box next to “Show more options”.
6. Check the box next to “Play another media synchronously (extra audio file)”.
7. Click the Browse… button that appears next to “Extra media”.¹³
8. In the new “Open Media” window, click Add… again and select your audio file.¹⁴
9. Click Select in this second window.
10. Back in the first “Open Media” window, click the Convert / Save dropdown button at the bottom and choose Convert.¹⁵
11. In the “Convert” window:
    • Profile: Choose an output profile. A common one is “Video – H.264 + MP3 (MP4)” or similar.¹⁶ If you need more control, you can click the wrench icon next to the Profile dropdown to customize settings.
      • Important for Customization (Wrench Icon):
        • Under the Audio codec tab, make sure “Audio” is checked and select your desired audio codec (e.g., MP3, AAC). You can adjust the bitrate here.
        • Under the Video codec tab, ensure “Video” is checked.
        • Under the Encapsulation tab, ensure it’s set to “MP4/MOV” or a suitable container for your video.¹⁷
        • If your original video already has audio that you want to replace, you might need to first convert the video to remove its original audio, and then use that silent video to merge with your new audio. This can get a bit complex. For simple overlays, just ensuring the new audio is enabled should be enough.
    • Destination file: Click Browse and choose where you want to save the new video file and give it a name (e.g., my_video_with_audio.mp4).¹⁸ Make sure the file extension is .mp4.
12. Click Start.

VLC will now start converting and merging the video and audio. You’ll see a progress bar in the main VLC window. Once it’s done, your new MP4 file with the integrated audio will be saved to the location you specified.¹⁹

Important Considerations for Merging:

Alternative Tools: For more precise control over audio merging, multi-track editing, or professional results, dedicated video editing software (like DaVinci Resolve, CapCut, Adobe Premiere Pro, iMovie, etc.) is highly recommended.²²

Synchronization: VLC doesn’t offer advanced tools to sync audio precisely. If your audio and video are not already perfectly aligned in length and timing, you might experience sync issues in the final output.

Quality Loss: Re-encoding video always involves some degree of quality loss, especially if you’re converting to a different codec or lower bitrate.²⁰

Original Audio: If your original video already has an audio track, the new audio track might play alongside it or, depending on the profile chosen, might replace it.²¹ If you want to replace the original audio entirely and ensure no overlap, it’s often better to remove the original audio first (by converting the video with no audio track enabled) and then merge the silent video with your new audio.