Initializing GStreamer

When writing a GStreamer application, you can simply include gst/gst.h to get access to the library functions.

Before the GStreamer libraries can be used, gst_init has to be called from the main application. This call will perform the necessary initialization of the library as well as parse the GStreamer-specific command line options.

A typical program would start like this:


#include <gst/gst.h>

...

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  ...
  gst_init (&argc, &argv);
  ...
}
  

Use the GST_VERSION_MAJOR, GST_VERSION_MINOR and GST_VERSION_MICRO macros to get the GStreamer version you are building against, or use the function gst_version to get the version your application is linked against.

It is also possible to call the gst_init function with two NULL arguments, in which case no command line options will be parsed by GStreamer.

The popt interface

You can also use a popt table to initialize your own parameters as shown in the next code fragment:


int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  gboolean silent = FALSE;
  gchar *savefile = NULL;
  struct poptOption options[] = {
    {"silent",	's',  POPT_ARG_NONE|POPT_ARGFLAG_STRIP,   &silent,   0,
     "do not output status information", NULL},
    {"output",	'o',  POPT_ARG_STRING|POPT_ARGFLAG_STRIP, &savefile, 0,
     "save xml representation of pipeline to FILE and exit", "FILE"},
    POPT_TABLEEND
  };

  gst_init_with_popt_table (&argc, &argv, options);

  ...
    

As shown in this fragment, you can use a popt table to define your application-specific command line options, and pass this table to the function gst_init_with_popt_table. Your application options will be parsed in addition to the standard GStreamer options.