How to preselect audio tracks in VLC when the language name is not in the track name?

Question

I have a number of videos that have been provided to me in multiple languages. Unfortunately the first track is in Spanish and the second track is in English. These audio tracks simply named Track 1 and Track 2 respectively.

I have attempted to use the standard option of setting it in the preferences:

However when I pick EN or even Track 2 it simply will not default to the Track 2 English track. Any ideas on what may be going on here and how to force VLC to choose the correct audio tracks?

Solution

You may use VLC's command line options:

Windows:

c:\ProgramFiles\VideoLAN\VLC.EXE --audio-track 1 VIDEO.MKV

OS X:

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC --audio-track 1 VIDEO.MKV

option --audio-track x where x = [0..n] (starting with zero)

Comments

[Karan]

What file types are these - MKVs? You can easily change the default tracks or even remove the tracks that are not required.

[Mister Henson]

misterhenson.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/…

[ylluminate]

Nice to know. Useful, but not the solution in this case. It appears that I need to modify all of the tags for these particular files.