gstreamer/docs/manual/intro-preface.xml

<chapter id="cha-intro">
  <title>Introduction</title>
  <para> 
    This chapter gives you an overview of the technologies described in this
    book.  
  </para>

  <sect1 id="sec-intro-what">
    <title>What is GStreamer?</title>
    <para> 
      GStreamer is a framework for creating streaming media applications.
      The fundamental design comes from the video pipeline at Oregon Graduate
      Institute, as well as some ideas from DirectShow.  
    </para>
 
    <para>
      GStreamer's development framework makes it possible to write any 
      streaming multimedia application. The framework includes several
      components to build a full featured media player capable of playing
      MPEG1, MPEG2, AVI, MP3, WAV, AU, ...
    </para> 

    <para>
      GStreamer, however, is much more than just another media player. Its
      main advantages are that the pluggable components also make it possible
      to write a full flegded video or audio editing application. 
    </para> 

    <para>
      The framework is based on plug-ins that will provide the various codec 
      and other functionality. The plugins can be connected and arranged in
      a pipeline. This pipeline defines the flow of the data. Pipelines can 
      also be edited with a GUI editor and saved as XML so that pipeline
      libraries can be made with a minimum of effort.
    </para> 

    <para>
      The GStreamer core function is to provide a framework for plugins, data flow 
      and media type handling/negotiation. 
      It also provides an API to write applications using the various plugins.
    </para> 

    <para>
      This book is about GStreamer from a developer's point of view; it describes
      how to write a GStreamer application using the GStreamer libraries and tools.
    </para> 

  </sect1>
</chapter>