Load External Audio Track for a Video in MPC-HC

Sometimes you may want to either add an audio track to a video that has none or to play a different audio track to the one it has e.g. a commentary.

You can do this quite easily using Media Player Classic (MPC-HC) by doing either of the following:

Option 1: Load External Audio Automatically

For a video that has no audio track, MPC-HC will automatically play a separate audio track if it has the same name as the video and are both located in the same folder. e.g. Bick Buck Bunny.mkv (video) and Bick Buck Bunny.m4a (audio)

This function is usually turned on by default when you install MPC-HC. The option can be enabled or disabled by going to: Options > Playback > Auto-load audio files.

Option 2: Load External Audio Manually

With this option you can load a separate audio track with a different name. Additionally, this allows you to add a different audio stream to a video that already has an audio track(s) so that you can easily override or switch between them.

To do this:

1. Open MPC-HC and press Ctrl+O or right-click inside it’s window and then go to File > Open File…
2. In the Open box browse and select the video file and then in the Dub box browse and select a playable external audio file (e.g. aac/m4a, ac3, mp3, ogg/opus etc.). Click Ok when done.
   
3. If the selected video has no audio file, MPC-HC will automatically play the audio track selected.

If the video had its own audio stream, you’ll have to switch to the external audio track by selecting it by right-clicking > Audio Track > External Audio File

If you cannot switch between different audio tracks, go to Settings > Internal Filters > Audio Switcher and make sure the option Enable built-in audio switcher (requires restart) is enabled. If this option is disabled, MPC plays both audio tracks simultaneously.