FFmpeg ERROR:

[aac @ 0x806362f00] Using a PCE to encode channel layout "5.1(side)"

SOLUTION:

If the source file signals a layout of 5.1(side) instead of 5.1, the AAC encoder will throw the error because the AAC spec only supports 5.1 (rear channels instead of side). To re-phrase this slightly different and with more detail:

The general cause of the problem is while re-encoding/transcoding to the AAC codec (Advanced Audio Coding) from a source with various other high quality codecs such as:

it does not auto-select the standard 5.1 channel layout (called 5.1) if the source has a channel layout of 5.1(side).
While the AAC encoder may be able to automatically determine the amount of audio channels, FFmpeg has a hard time determining correct channel layout.

You will need to use the -channel_layout "5.1" switch parameter to force FFmpeg to use the desired layout.

Here is an example of using it with a real world example:

for f in *.mkv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:m:language:eng \
-map "0:s?" -dn -c:v copy -b:a 341k -channel_layout "5.1" -c:a aac \
-c:s copy "${f/.mkv/-modified.mkv}"; done

The default channel layouts supported by the AAC encoder are:
mono, stereo, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1
(FC, FL+FR, FL+FR+FC, FL+FR+FC+BC, FL+FR+FC+BL+BR, FL+FR+FC+BL+BR+LFE)

These are the channel configurations:

  1. 0: Defined in AOT Specifc Config
  2. 1: 1 channel: front-center
  3. 2: 2 channels: front-left, front-right
  4. 3: 3 channels: front-center, front-left, front-right
  5. 4: 4 channels: front-center, front-left, front-right, back-center
  6. 5: 5 channels: front-center, front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right
  7. 6: 6 channels: front-center, front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right, LFE-channel
  8. 7: 8 channels: front-center, front-left, front-right, side-left, side-right, back-left, back-right, LFE-channel

Credit goes to: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7384

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