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I wanna believe that this is a fantastic piece of software. However it's really bad at describing what it does. As a software developer, I cannot find a high-le

I wanna believe that this is a fantastic piece of software. However it's really bad at describing what it does. As a software developer, I cannot find a high-level 2-5 sentence description of what GStreamer actually is/does on their website. I might just be blind, but this should really be on the home page above the fold. So many OSS projects fail at this :(

TingPing 5y ago
Its a multimedia framework. It can do everything in that domain, decoding, muxing, rendering, etc.
CameronNemo 5y ago
Their homepage does just get straight to the release notes, but if you select documentation on the sidebar you get a nice synopsis. https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/ https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/
deleted 5y ago
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Uehreka 5y ago
I just deleted my reply to your comment, because I checked their homepage a second time and then saw this at the bottom: > What is GStreamer? > GStreamer is a library for constructing graphs of media-handling components. The applications it supports range from simple Ogg/Vorbis playback, audio/video streaming to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing. > Applications can take advantage of advances in codec and filter technology transparently. Developers can add new codecs and filters by writing a simple plugin with a clean, generic interface. Read more ... > GStreamer is released under the LGPL. The 1.x series is API and ABI stable and supersedes the previous stable 0.10 series. Both can be installed in parallel. That should be at the top of the page.
ShoveItHN 5y ago
I agree. Apparently it's just a library, so you have to use it to construct an application. But they should provide some links to applications built with it.
- zorgmonkey 5y ago
  It depends what you are trying to do much like ffmpeg they a command line tool called gst-launch-1.0 that can be used to do a lot (but I find the pipeline string syntax much nicer than ffmpeg's command line options), but you can also use gstreamer as a library embedded in an application (we've been very satisfied at my work using the rust bindings). One thing that is particularly nice is that the same pipeline syntax can be used embedded in an application or from the command line. If you want they some example pipelines here https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tools/gst-launch.html?gi-language=c#pipeline-examples https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tools/gst-la...
iostream24 5y ago
That’s because it basically does everything, and is extensible via plugins below :)
- preya2k 5y ago
  I understand it seems hard to describe, because it is very versatile and does a lot of things. But not describing it isn't helping. Even such a broad framework can be described in a couple of sentences. As mentioned above, they have it in their "Docs", but not on the home page.

TingPing 5y ago

Its a multimedia framework. It can do everything in that domain, decoding, muxing, rendering, etc.

CameronNemo 5y ago

Their homepage does just get straight to the release notes, but if you select documentation on the sidebar you get a nice synopsis. https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/ https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Uehreka 5y ago

I just deleted my reply to your comment, because I checked their homepage a second time and then saw this at the bottom: > What is GStreamer? > GStreamer is a library for constructing graphs of media-handling components. The applications it supports range from simple Ogg/Vorbis playback, audio/video streaming to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing. > Applications can take advantage of advances in codec and filter technology transparently. Developers can add new codecs and filters by writing a simple plugin with a clean, generic interface. Read more ... > GStreamer is released under the LGPL. The 1.x series is API and ABI stable and supersedes the previous stable 0.10 series. Both can be installed in parallel. That should be at the top of the page.

ShoveItHN 5y ago

I agree. Apparently it's just a library, so you have to use it to construct an application. But they should provide some links to applications built with it.

zorgmonkey 5y ago
It depends what you are trying to do much like ffmpeg they a command line tool called gst-launch-1.0 that can be used to do a lot (but I find the pipeline string syntax much nicer than ffmpeg's command line options), but you can also use gstreamer as a library embedded in an application (we've been very satisfied at my work using the rust bindings). One thing that is particularly nice is that the same pipeline syntax can be used embedded in an application or from the command line. If you want they some example pipelines here https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tools/gst-launch.html?gi-language=c#pipeline-examples https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tools/gst-la...

iostream24 5y ago

That’s because it basically does everything, and is extensible via plugins below :)

preya2k 5y ago
I understand it seems hard to describe, because it is very versatile and does a lot of things. But not describing it isn't helping. Even such a broad framework can be described in a couple of sentences. As mentioned above, they have it in their "Docs", but not on the home page.