This page contains a detailed description of the GstInterpipe Dynamic Switching feature.

One of the greatest strengths of GstInterpipe is the ability of an interpipesrc to switch between different interpipesinks at runtime. To do so, change the listen-to property. Similarly, disconnections and reconnections can be performed by clearing and setting the property accordingly. When performing dynamic switching, caps must be taken into consideration. Specifically, a switch can be performed to a node in two scenarios:

No other listeners

Caps are re-negotiated between the two pipelines, looking for the optimum caps.

Existing listeners

The sink pipeline must support the caps already configured by the node and listeners, otherwise, it'll fail.

The following figure illustrates this concept:

The caps re-negotiation capability can be disabled with the allow-renegotiation property. The following table summarizes the involved property:

The switch can be disabled entirely by setting the block-switch property. The following table summarizes the involved property:

Programmatically, the dynamic switch can be performed as follows:

/* Create pipelines */
GstElement *pipe1 = gst_parse_launch ("videotestsrc ! interpipesink name=camera1", NULL);
GstElement *pipe2 = gst_parse_launch ("videotestsrc ! interpipesink name=camera2", NULL);
GstElement *pipe3 = gst_parse_launch ("interpipesrc name=src listen-to=camera1 ! fakesink", NULL);

/* Grab a reference to the interpipesrc */
GstElement *src = gst_bin_get_by_name(pipe3, "src");

/* Perform the switch */
g_object_set (src, "listen-to", "camera2", NULL);