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>Chapter 12. Elements</H1
><DIV
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><H1
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><A
NAME="section-elements-create"
>12.1. Creating a GstElement</A
></H1
><P
>
A <CODE
CLASS="classname"
>GstElement</CODE
> object is created from
a factory. To create an element, you have to get access to a
<CODE
CLASS="classname"
>GstElementFactory</CODE
> object using a unique
factory name.
</P
><P
>
The following code example is used to get a factory that can be used
to create the 'mad' element, an mp3 decoder.
</P
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> GstElementFactory *factory;
factory = gst_element_factory_find ("mad");
</PRE
><P
>
Once you have the handle to the element factory, you can create a
real element with the following code fragment:
</P
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> GstElement *element;
element = gst_element_factory_create (factory, "decoder");
</PRE
><P
> <CODE
CLASS="function"
>gst_element_factory_create</CODE
> will use the element
factory to create an element with the given name. The name of the
element is something you can use later on to look up the element in
a bin, for example. You can pass <VAR
CLASS="symbol"
>NULL</VAR
> as the name
argument to get a unique, default name.
</P
><P
> A simple shortcut exists for creating an element from a factory. The
following example creates an element named "decoder" from the element
factory named "mad". This convenience function is most widely used to
create an element.
</P
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> GstElement *element;
element = gst_element_factory_make ("mad", "decoder");
</PRE
><P
>
When you don't need the element anymore, you need to unref it, as shown in the following
example.
</P
><PRE
CLASS="programlisting"
> GstElement *element;
...
gst_element_unref (element);
</PRE
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