All the following can be found under options and the images tab.
Make sure that you have ZM_STREAM_METHOD set to mpeg and that ZM_OPT_MPEG is set to something other than no. You also probably need to make sure the paths for ZM_PATH_MPEG_ENCODE and ZM_PATH_FFMPEG are correct.
I don't know what distro you have but my ZM_PATH_FFMPEG /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg on a Ubuntu system. You have to make sure that the path to ffmpeg correct. I don't have anything on the ZM_FFMPEG_INPUT_OPTIONS line. Can you generate videos of events. If that works then you know ffmpeg is working.
live mpeg uses libavcodec, not the ffmpeg executable, so make sure you have libavcodec installed and zm compiled against it. besides that, check zms logs for any hints if you have zm compiled with live mpeg support or not.
if common sense is so uncommon, why is it called common then?
i have installed zm by APT from debian package it's a binary .deb not a source. You think it's nessecery to compil source than the binary.
for me i think binary is better,perhaps zm from source is better.
i have all libcodecs installed w32codecs.