vlc-0.8.6d codec issues

[andyt12]

Hi,
Im a new user and am having a heap of issues even to get vlc to do the most basic of things.
What I want to achieve is to have vlc transcode and stream a live dvb-c channel to dss in mpeg4.
Where im getting stuck is the transcoding into mpeg4. keeps telling me no suitable decoder module.
To make it simple to debug I thought I will get vlc to play a mpeg4 file but no suitable decoder module.
here is the output.
[00001038] stream_out_transcode private error: cannot find encoder ((null))
[00001038] stream_out_transcode private error: cannot create video chain
[00001046] main packetizer error: cannot create packetizer output (mpgv)
[00001060] main decoder error: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `mp4a'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.
[00001061] main decoder error: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `mp4v'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.
[00000976] main playlist: nothing to play

Ive compiled ffmpeg with the right support. Ive tried to use emerge with the right use flags and ive built by hand, still no joy.
Its like vlc will see / use none of ffmpegs codecs. I can play Mpeg2 from dvd and dvb with no issues but any other codec is no go.
What am I doing wrong ? Its starting to drive me nuts.
How can I get vlc to give me some use full debug messages ? -vvv just makes more spam but doesn't tell me why it cant find the codec.
Surley it cant be this hard, I must be doing something wrong.
Please help.

Andrew

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Your command line is obviously wrong... It can't find the encoder you are specifying.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Did you build libmpeg2 as well?

[abakker]

This error may be caused by the fact that the FFMPEG VLC plugin could not be loaded. Loading of the plugin may fail when there are undefined symbols due to dynamic linking. To see if this is the case run in your VLC build dir:
$ make install
$ rm -r ~/.vlc/
$ ./vlc -vv -list

To fix the loading problem, make sure that the VLC plugins get compiled/linked with the right libraries and/or library search paths. That solved my problems. It may also help to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the dirs that contain the libs with the missing symbols (didn't test that).