VLC syntax to transcode and stream to stdout?

Goal: I am trying to use VLC as a local server to expand the video capabilities of an app created with Adobe AIR, Flex and Actionscript. I am using VLC to stream to stdoutand reading that output from within my app.

VLC Streaming capabilities
VLC Flash Video
Stream VLC to Website with asf and Flash

Status: I am able to launch VLC as a background process and control it through its remote control interface (more detail). I can load, transcode and stream a local video file. The example app below is a barebones testbed demonstrating this.

Issue: I am getting data in to my app but it is not rendering as video. I don't know if it is a problem with my VLC commands or with writing to/reading from stdout. This technique of reading from stdout in AIR works (with ffmpeg for example).

One of the various transcoding commands I have tried:

-I rc  // remote control interface  
-vvv   // verbose debuging  
--sout  // transcode, stream to stdout 
"#transcode{vcodec=FLV1}:std{access=file,mux=ffmpeg{mux=flv},dst=-}"

This results in data coming into to my app but for some reason it is not rendering as video when using appendBytes with the NetStream instance.

If instead I write the data to an .flv file, a valid file is created – so the broken part seems to be writing it to stdout. One thing I have noticed: I am not getting metadata through the stdout`method. If I play the file created with the command below, I do see metadata.

// writing to a file
var output:File = File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath("stream.flv");
var outputPath:String = output.nativePath;
"#transcode{vcodec=FLV1}:std{access=file,mux=ffmpeg{mux=flv},dst=" + outputPath + "}");

Hoping someone sees where I am going wrong here.

Update 1: Just to add some more detail (!) – I took a look at the .flv file that is generated to examine the metadata. It appears at the head of the file as shown below. I have the correct onMetaData handler set up and see a trace of this data if I play the file from disk. I do not see this trace when reading from stdout and NetStream is in Data Generation mode. Is it possible that it isn't getting sent to stdout for some reason? I've tried generating my own header and appending that before the stream starts – I may not have the header format correct.

Update 2: So in my AIR app I was able to crudely parse the incoming stdout stream coming from VLC. I wanted to see if the FLV header data was being sent – and it appears that it is. I don't know if it is in the correct format, etc. but as I mention above, if I write to an .flv file instead of stdout, a valid .flv file is created.

Completely at a loss now – have tried everything I could think of and followed up every web link I could find on the issues involved. Alas – so close and it would have been so cool to leverage VLC from within AIR.