Choose audio track for video

"The .avi file has two audio tracks, Spanish and English. When I use a converter to get it ready for my iPod, it will use the Spanish track. How do I get a converter that I can chose which audio track to use?"

Since I don't know which converter you're currently using, I'll offer an easy solution that will get you the result you want without buying more software and an investment of about 5 minutes extra time. Before you covert the video file, open it in VirtualDubMod, modify the audio properties of the file, and save it without needing to recompress the audio. You can either save a copy with the Spanish track still there or overwrite the file and ditch the Spanish track altogether. Here's how it works:

I specifically like VirtualDubMod better for this because it does a better job of displaying audio tracks visually. VirtualDub will also work if you prefer, but the screenshots below are specific to VirtualDubMod.

First download a copy of VirtualDubMod and open your AVI file.

From the Streams menu choose Stream list, which opens a window like the one below. I don't currently have any AVI files with multiple audio streams, but yours should show several tracks here instead of the one in my screenshot.

I would do this in two steps to make sure you get the result you want. Disable the Spanish language track in your file by selecting it in the available streams list and clicking the disable button. Now select the second audio track in your list, which should be the English language track. Click Move up to make it the first track in your list. When this is done click OK.

From the File menu, choose Save As. Name your file and be sure to choose Direct Stream Copy in the Video Mode dropdown menu (this makes sure you aren't recompressing the video). Click the Save button when you've adjusted the settings.

Saving a two hour file this way takes less than 5 minutes, so the process should go fairly quickly. When finished, you should have a video file plays back the English language track by default. Convert this file in your video converter.

Tip: If you have a bunch of files to change audio tracks on, queue them up by checking the Don't run this job now box. You can then run them all by selecting File > Job Control from the menu.