can I take the audio track from a video in one language and use it to replace the audio on a different file?

2026-08-01 17:27 UTC

I’m trying to reduce the size of my video collection because I’m running out of storage. My strategy is to look for smaller sized files to replace very large ones. When that fails, I am using handbrake to rencode. Its working, but very slowly due to my ancient computer. Redownloading is the much faster method. Some titles, which were originally released as non-english, have existing small files, but the English audio is only available less commonly as a huge file. Is it possible to redownload the non-english video and map the English audio onto it? It might be too much fooling around to get syncing correct. Extra question, does anybody know how to set up sonarr/radarr to try to reduce filesize automatically? Ive been doing all the downloading by hand.

Replies (4)

@mbirth@lemmy.ml 2026-08-01 17:39

You might want to look into Tdarr. Configure it once and let your old computer transcode away automatically. For audio stream replacement - if you get the exact same video (same intro length, same scene lengths, same total length, etc.), you can easily replace the audio streams and it should work out. ffmpeg is your friend to do it lossless.

Open ##4328447
@tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-08-02 14:36

Yes, absolutely, but not in an automated way. Remuxers do this sometimes. They compare video, audio and subtitles from multiple releases and select the best one and frame sync them. However, the sync process is very manual and there are cases when different releases have different cuts, leading audio is in sync at the beginning but went out of sync later on, ruining the whole experience.

Open ##4330832
@MiRRoRMaN@ani.social 2026-08-03 12:29

always a pickle to do, because it tends to always go out of sync. you’d have to find a way to get the timing right over the entire movie.

Open ##4354269
@Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-08-03 22:00

I do this with MKVToolNix, as long as the source and destination files are the same “cut” it will line up.

Open ##4365031