<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >What is GStreamer?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79;charset=UTF-8"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="GStreamer Application Development Manual (0.10.36)" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="About GStreamer" HREF="part-introduction.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="About GStreamer" HREF="part-introduction.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Design principles" HREF="chapter-motivation.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="chapter" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" ><SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > Application Development Manual (0.10.36)</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="part-introduction.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="chapter-motivation.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="chapter" ><H1 ><A NAME="chapter-gstreamer" ></A >Chapter 1. What is <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN >?</H1 ><P > <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > is a framework for creating streaming media applications. The fundamental design comes from the video pipeline at Oregon Graduate Institute, as well as some ideas from DirectShow. </P ><P > <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN >'s development framework makes it possible to write any type of streaming multimedia application. The <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > framework is designed to make it easy to write applications that handle audio or video or both. It isn't restricted to audio and video, and can process any kind of data flow. The pipeline design is made to have little overhead above what the applied filters induce. This makes <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > a good framework for designing even high-end audio applications which put high demands on latency. </P ><P > One of the most obvious uses of <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > is using it to build a media player. <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > already includes components for building a media player that can support a very wide variety of formats, including MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG-1/2, AVI, Quicktime, mod, and more. <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN >, however, is much more than just another media player. Its main advantages are that the pluggable components can be mixed and matched into arbitrary pipelines so that it's possible to write a full-fledged video or audio editing application. </P ><P > The framework is based on plugins that will provide the various codec and other functionality. The plugins can be linked and arranged in a pipeline. This pipeline defines the flow of the data. Pipelines can also be edited with a GUI editor and saved as XML so that pipeline libraries can be made with a minimum of effort. </P ><P > The <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > core function is to provide a framework for plugins, data flow and media type handling/negotiation. It also provides an API to write applications using the various plugins. </P ><P > Specifically, <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > provides <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >an API for multimedia applications</P ></LI ><LI ><P >a plugin architecture</P ></LI ><LI ><P >a pipeline architecture</P ></LI ><LI ><P >a mechanism for media type handling/negotiation</P ></LI ><LI ><P >over 150 plug-ins</P ></LI ><LI ><P >a set of tools</P ></LI ></UL > </P ><P > <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > plug-ins could be classified into <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >protocols handling</P ></LI ><LI ><P >sources: for audio and video (involves protocol plugins)</P ></LI ><LI ><P >formats: parsers, formaters, muxers, demuxers, metadata, subtitles</P ></LI ><LI ><P >codecs: coders and decoders</P ></LI ><LI ><P >filters: converters, mixers, effects, ...</P ></LI ><LI ><P >sinks: for audio and video (involves protocol plugins)</P ></LI ></UL > </P ><DIV CLASS="figure" ><A NAME="section-gstreamer-img" ></A ><P ><B >Figure 1-1. Gstreamer overview</B ></P ><DIV CLASS="mediaobject" ><P ><IMG SRC="images/gstreamer-overview.png"></P ></DIV ></DIV ><P > <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > is packaged into <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >gstreamer: the core package</P ></LI ><LI ><P >gst-plugins-base: an essential exemplary set of elements</P ></LI ><LI ><P >gst-plugins-good: a set of good-quality plug-ins under LGPL</P ></LI ><LI ><P >gst-plugins-ugly: a set of good-quality plug-ins that might pose distribution problems</P ></LI ><LI ><P >gst-plugins-bad: a set of plug-ins that need more quality</P ></LI ><LI ><P >gst-python: the python bindings</P ></LI ><LI ><P >a few others packages</P ></LI ></UL > </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="part-introduction.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="chapter-motivation.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >About GStreamer</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="part-introduction.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Design principles</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >