From Wikipedia:

GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one format, processes them, and exports them in another. The formats and processes can be changed in a plug and play fashion.

GStreamer supports a wide variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing. The pipeline design serves as a base to create many types of multimedia applications such as video editors, transcoders, streaming media broadcasters and media players.

Install the gstreamer package.

To make GStreamer useful, install the plugins packages you require. See official documentation for list of features in each plugin.

• gst-libav - Libav-based plugin containing many decoders and encoders.
• gst-plugins-bad - Plugins that need more quality, testing or documentation.
• gst-plugins-base - Essential exemplary set of elements.
• gst-plugins-good - Good-quality plugins under LGPL license.
• gst-plugins-ugly - Good-quality plugins that might pose distribution problems.

A helpful tool of GStreamer is the gst-launch-1.0(1) command. It is an extremely versatile command line tool to create GStreamer pipelines. It is very similar to and can do many of the things the FFmpeg command can do. Here are some examples:

Convert an MP4 file to MKV:

$ gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=source.mp4 ! qtdemux name=demux matroskamux name=mux ! filesink location=dest.mkv demux.audio_0 ! queue ! aacparse ! queue ! mux.audio_0 demux.video_0 ! queue ! h264parse ! queue ! mux.video_0

Another helpful tool is gst-discoverer-1.0(1), which is the GStreamer equivalent of FFmpeg's ffprobe(1).

Get info on a video file:

$ gst-discoverer-1.0 file.mp4

Properties:
 Duration: 0:02:55.613000000
 Seekable: yes
 Live: no
 container: Quicktime
 audio: MPEG-4 AAC
 Stream ID: c910ef2fa357f9f4ad365aebc98cfca88d23fdca99d832645f5113efa43b0cd3/002
 Language: <unknown>
 Channels: 2 (front-left, front-right)
 Sample rate: 44100
 Depth: 16
 Bitrate: 125588
 Max bitrate: 125588
 video: H.264 (Constrained Baseline Profile)
 Stream ID: c910ef2fa357f9f4ad365aebc98cfca88d23fdca99d832645f5113efa43b0cd3/001
 Width: 192
 Height: 144
 Depth: 24
 Frame rate: 15000/1001
 Pixel aspect ratio: 1/1
 Interlaced: false
 Bitrate: 107884
 Max bitrate: 107884

PulseAudio support is provided by the gst-plugins-good package.

PipeWire support is provided by the gst-plugin-pipewire package.

See Phonon.

See Hardware video acceleration.

GStreamer will automatically detect and use the correct API [1]. Depending on the system install:

• gst-plugin-va for VA-API support.
• gst-plugins-bad and nvidia-utils for NVDECODE/NVENCODE support.

If the new elements do not show up after installing the packages, you may want to delete and rebuild the plugin registry. Usually it suffices to

$ rm ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.*.bin

Gstreamer will then rebuild the registry on the next invocation, which usually takes a few seconds.

To verify VA-API support:

$ gst-inspect-1.0 va

Plugin Details:
 Name va
 Description VA-API codecs plugin
 Filename /usr/lib/gstreamer-1.0/libgstva.so
 Version version
 License LGPL
 Source module gst-plugins-bad
 Documentation https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/va/
 Source release date date
 Binary package Arch Linux gst-plugins-bad version
 Origin URL https://archlinux.org/

 vaav1dec: VA-API AV1 Decoder
 vacompositor: VA-API Video Compositor
 vadeinterlace: VA-API Deinterlacer
 vah264dec: VA-API H.264 Decoder
 vah264enc: VA-API H.264 Encoder
 vah264lpenc: VA-API H.264 Low Power Encoder
 vah265dec: VA-API H.265 Decoder
 vah265enc: VA-API H.265 Encoder
 vah265lpenc: VA-API H.265 Low Power Encoder
 vajpegdec: VA-API JPEG Decoder
 vampeg2dec: VA-API Mpeg2 Decoder
 vapostproc: VA-API Video Postprocessor
 vavp8dec: VA-API VP8 Decoder
 vavp9dec: VA-API VP9 Decoder

 14 features:
 +-- 14 elements

To verify NVDECODE/NVENCODE support:

$ gst-inspect-1.0 nvcodec

Plugin Details:
 Name nvcodec
 Description GStreamer NVCODEC plugin
 Filename /usr/lib/gstreamer-1.0/libgstnvcodec.so
 Version version
 License LGPL
 Source module gst-plugins-bad
 Source release date date
 Binary package GStreamer Bad Plugins (Arch Linux)
 Origin URL https://archlinux.org/

 cudadownload: CUDA downloader
 cudaupload: CUDA uploader
 nvautogpuh264enc: NVENC H.264 Video Encoder Auto GPU select Mode
 nvautogpuh265enc: NVENC H.265 Video Encoder Auto GPU select Mode
 nvav1dec: NVDEC AV1 Decoder
 nvcudah264enc: NVENC H.264 Video Encoder CUDA Mode
 nvcudah265enc: NVENC H.265 Video Encoder CUDA Mode
 nvh264dec: NVDEC h264 Video Decoder
 nvh264enc: NVENC H.264 Video Encoder
 nvh264sldec: NVDEC H.264 Stateless Decoder
 nvh265dec: NVDEC h265 Video Decoder
 nvh265enc: NVENC HEVC Video Encoder
 nvh265sldec: NVDEC H.265 Stateless Decoder
 nvjpegdec: NVDEC jpeg Video Decoder
 nvmpeg2videodec: NVDEC mpeg2video Video Decoder
 nvmpeg4videodec: NVDEC mpeg4video Video Decoder
 nvmpegvideodec: NVDEC mpegvideo Video Decoder
 nvvp8dec: NVDEC vp8 Video Decoder
 nvvp8sldec: NVDEC VP8 Stateless Decoder
 nvvp9dec: NVDEC vp9 Video Decoder
 nvvp9sldec: NVDEC VP9 Stateless Decoder

 21 features:
 +-- 21 elements

For some NVIDIA users, gst-libav may prioritize the Libav decoder over nvcodec decoders which will inhibit hardware acceleration. The GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK environment variable can be used to rank decoders and thus alleviate this issue. See "GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK" in the documentation for more information. For example:

GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK=nvmpegvideodec:MAX,nvmpeg2videodec:MAX,nvmpeg4videodec:MAX,nvh264sldec:MAX,nvh264dec:MAX,nvjpegdec:MAX,nvh265sldec:MAX,nvh265dec:MAX,nvvp9dec:MAX

Those without AV1 hardware support may also want to disable AV1 decoders (e.g., for YouTube on webkit2gtk^AUR-based browsers) by appending avdec_av1:NONE and av1dec:NONE to the list above.

• Sound system
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