Description GStreamer is a framework for constructing graphs of various filters (termed elements here) that will handle streaming media. Any discreet (packetizable) media type is supported, with provisions for automatically determining source type. Formatting/framing information is provided with a powerful negotiation framework. Plugins are heavily used to provide for all elements, allowing one to construct plugins outside of the GST library, even released binary-only if license require (please don't). GStreamer borrows heavily from both the OGI media pipeline and Microsoft's DirectShow, hopefully taking the best of both and leaving the cruft behind. Its interface is slowly getting stable. The GStreamer library should be initialized with gst_init() before it can be used. You should pass pointers to the main argc and argv variables so that GStreamer can process its own command line options, as shown in the following example. It's allowed to pass two NULL pointers to gst_init() in case you don't want to pass the command line args to GStreamer. You can also use GOption to initialize your own parameters as shown in the next code fragment: Use gst_version() to query the library version at runtime or use the GST_VERSION_* macros to find the version at compile time. Optionally gst_version_string() returns a printable string. The gst_deinit() call is used to clean up all internal resources used by GStreamer. It is mostly used in unit tests to check for leaks. Last reviewed on 2006-08-11 (0.10.10)