VLC v.0.8.5-9 (along with ffmpeg v.20060920-1) supported capturing and saving an audio stream to HDD in mp3 format while listening at the same time. After upgrading VLC to v.0.8.6a-4 (which also upgraded ffmpeg to v.20070131-1) this capability was lost.

To be specific, here are the VLC GUI settings I used:

VLC main menu: File>Open Network Stream>Open...Network>tick HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS and enter the URL (http://vruk.sc.llnwd.net:12265) >under Advanced Options tick Stream/Save and click on Settings (opens Stream Output window)>Outputs, tick Play locally, tick File, click on Browse and enter filename and location for the stream saving file, i.e. /home/robert/vlcout.mp3>Encapsulation method, tick on Raw>Transcoding options, tick on Audio codec and select mp3>Bitrate 128 kb/s, Channels 2>OK, OK, to start recording. Stop or Quit VLC, to stop recording.

Or, the same thing done from the command line:

$ vlc http://vruk.sc.llnwd.net:12265 --sout '#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=128,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=display,dst=standard{access=file,mux=raw,dst="/home/robert/vlcout.mp3"}}'

After the upgrade, the audio stream isn't playing anymore over my speakers, the vlcout.mp3 file is empty (0B), and VCL gives me the following error messages:

stream_out_transcode error: cannot find encoder ((null))
stream_out_transcode error: cannot create audio chain
main error: cannot create packetizer output (mpga)

Downgrading both VLC and ffmpeg to the earlier versions that I was using before restored this functionality, i.e. saving an audio stream in mp3 format works again.

I believe there may be problems with the current versions of both VLC and ffmpeg.

1. VLC 0.8.6a doesn't seem to have ffmpeg enabled or doesn't find ffmpeg modules, i.e.

$ vlc --list | grep ffmpeg
VLC media player 0.8.6a Janus
$

whereas with the older versions I get

$ vlc --list | grep ffmpeg
VLC media player 0.8.5 Janus
ffmpeg FFmpeg audio/video decoder/encoder ((MS)MPEG4,SVQ1,H263,WMV,WMA)
ffmpeg FFmpeg chroma conversion
ffmpeg FFmpeg audio/video encoder
ffmpeg FFmpeg demuxer
ffmpeg FFmpeg video filter
ffmpeg FFmpeg crop padd filter
ffmpeg FFmpeg deinterlace video filter
$

2. The current package ffmpeg v.20070131-1 in extra may not refer to various libraries correctly in its configure parameters. E.g. in AUR there is an alternative pkgbuild ffmpeg-svn 8218-1 from 04-Mar-2007 in which the original configure parameters were replaced as follows:

--enable-mp3lame --> --enable-libmp3lame
--enable-vorbis --> --enable-libvorbis
--enable-faac --> --enable-libfaac
--enable-faad --> --enable-libfaad
--enable-a52 --> --enable-liba52
--enable-dts --> --enable-libdts

Has the ffmpeg package in extra been compiled with mp3 support which is needed for the transcoding module of VLC to encode in mp3 format (see the table "possible output formats for the transcoding module" in the VLC documentation at http://www.videolan.org/streaming-features.html )? The alternative ffmpeg-svn 8218-1 package in AUR conflicts with the ffmpeg package from extra, and I don't know how to tell the new VLC to use the alternative package instead of the one from extra.

I'm using kernel 2.6.18-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT and /usr/lib/libmp3lame.so and /usr/lib/libmp3lame.a are present on my system.

Other people have also found bugs in the current versions of VLC and ffmpeg:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=29548
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=29048
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=29004

A bug report supposedly had been posted by gradgrind on 2007-02-02 ( http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=29004 ).