GStreamer on arvau

ArchWiki / GStreamer

de:GStreamer hu:GStreamer ja:GStreamer zh-hans:GStreamer 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.

Installation

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

Common set of packages that cover the majority of use-cases:

gst-libav — Libav-based plugin containing many decoders and encoders.
gst-plugin-pipewire — Support for the PipeWire audio system.
gst-plugin-va — Support for the VA-API system.
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 the LGPL license. Also contains support for PulseAudio.
gst-plugins-ugly — Good-quality plugins that might pose distribution problems.

Usage

Using gst-launch-1.0

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

Using gst-discoverer-1.0

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:

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

$ gst-discoverer-1.0 file.mp4

Integration

PulseAudio

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

PipeWire

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

KDE / Phonon integration

See Phonon.

Hardware video acceleration

See Hardware video acceleration.

GStreamer will automatically detect and use the correct API https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/playback/hardware-accelerated-video-decoding.html. 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.

Verify VA-API support

To verify VA-API support:

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

$ gst-inspect-1.0 va

Verify NVDECODE/NVENCODE support

To verify NVDECODE/NVENCODE support:

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      datehttps://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

$ gst-inspect-1.0 nvcodec

Set decoder ranks

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-based browsers) by appending avdec_av1:NONE and av1dec:NONE to the list above.