The VideoLAN Forums

Why isn't there any list of dependancies for VLC compilation in the INSTALL/README files? I understood I have to instal ffmpeg with various options, then what?
I can't even understand where it's llooking for the includes! It says

checking for ffmpeg-config... no
checking ffmpeg/avcodec.h usability... no
checking ffmpeg/avcodec.h presence... no
checking for ffmpeg/avcodec.h... no
configure: error: Missing header file ffmpeg/avcodec.h.

But the /usr/include/ffmpeg/avcodec.h is here so WTF?

Well, you need to have the latest ffmpeg configured with a certain set of options to be able to compile VLC. Please search the forum for "ffmpeg" to get more information on this topic.

http://jmccoy.sdf-us.org/linux/multimedia.php
says

I downloaded the latest release from the ffmpeg site instead of the vlc site
Compiled with the following options - in particular using "pp" (post processing) is necessary for vlc to see the files.
./configure --enable-vorbis --enable-faad --enable-a52 --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-pp
Also needed to keep the source folder available when I built vlc because vlc is expecting header files that ffmpeg has but doesn't include when it installs itself

and VLC configure switch
--with-ffmpeg-tree=/home/jeff/ffmpeg-0.4.9-pre

I fear that ffmpeg 0.4.9-pre1 is too old. You need a current cvs-snapshot.

That was a quote from original text sorry. The one suggested on VLC source download page works just fine (ffmpeg-20041113.tar.bz2).