These are just some notes on how I'm using mencoder. For some reason, my build (on an Ubuntu Hoary system) isn't going so easy.

To get mp3lame support, I had to get lame from their site, compile and install it, and then do the following:

# cd /usr/lib
# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.so.0 .
# cd /usr/include/
# ln -s /usr/local/include/lame lame

For whatever reasons, mencoder doesn't add an option in their configure script to specify where lame is located, so you have to link it into the main lib and include directories. (Optionally, I guess I could mess with the makefiles, but, lame is something other apps would like, too.)