GStreamer 1.20 Multimedia Framework Released With Many Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GStreamer 1.20 Multimedia Framework Released With Many Improvements

GStreamer 1.20 is out as stable as the newest version of this widely-used, open-source and cross-platform multimedia framework...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GStreamer-1.20

[JuneAmara]

Smart encoding passthroughs

[Danny3]

Can someone explain to me what is this and what is it good for a Linux user?
I understand why do we have FFMPEG, video players like VLC, MPV, etc, but I don't understand what the point of Gstreamer.
I think I have installed some of it while following a tutorial about installing PipeWire in Kubuntu, but it was not explained for that purpose.

[DanL]

Can someone explain to me what is this and what is it good for a Linux user?
I understand why do we have FFMPEG, video players like VLC, MPV, etc, but I don't understand what the point of Gstreamer.

Gstreamer isn't too exciting from a user perspective (unless the user cares about codec licensing). It's more about making devs' lives easier.

[(tpm)]

Can someone explain to me what is this and what is it good for a Linux user?
I understand why do we have FFMPEG, video players like VLC, MPV, etc, but I don't understand what the point of Gstreamer.
I think I have installed some of it while following a tutorial about installing PipeWire in Kubuntu, but it was not explained for that purpose.

It's a framework (library) for application developers.

Think of it as the equivalent of GTK or Qt for graphical user interfaces, but for multimedia processing/streaming.

One of those ubiquitous middleware layers that users will only ever have to deal with if something goes wrong

[Danny3]

It's a framework (library) for application developers.

Think of it as the equivalent of GTK or Qt for graphical user interfaces, but for multimedia processing/streaming.

One of those ubiquitous middleware layers that users will only ever have to deal with if something goes wrong

But it's more for the streaming part?
Because I thought that FFMPEG is enough for any kind of video / audio processing.
Anyway, thanks!

[DanL]

Because I thought that FFMPEG is enough for any kind of video / audio processing.

https://www.oodlestechnologies.com/blogs/gstreamer-vs-ffmpeg-pros-and-cons-at-a-glance/

Again, it's not something users really want to worry about.

[coder]

Can someone explain to me what is this and what is it good for a Linux user?
I understand why do we have FFMPEG, video players like VLC, MPV, etc, but I don't understand what the point of Gstreamer.

It's a plugin framework for media processing, based on GLib/GObject. It has lots of flexibility in defining processing graphs and is even used in deep learning video analysis frameworks by Intel, Nvidia, and others. I think it was most likely inspired by Microsoft's DirectShow API.

There are some tools (like video editors, I think) which allow users to graphically build pipelines. You can also script pipelines using the `gst-launch-1.0` commandline interface.

It also has python and Rust bindings, even letting you use those languages for implementing your own plugins.

[coder]

https://www.oodlestechnologies.com/b...s-at-a-glance/
Again, it's not something users really want to worry about.

I'm not very knowledgeable about ffmpeg, but I think that somewhat undersells GStreamer.