gstreamer/docs/manual/advanced-dataaccess.xml

<chapter id="chapter-dataaccess">
  <title>Pipeline manipulation</title>
  <para>
    This chapter will discuss how you can manipulate your pipeline in several
    ways from your application on. Parts of this chapter are downright
    hackish, so be assured that you'll need some programming knowledge
    before you start reading this.
  </para>
  <para>
    Topics that will be discussed here include how you can insert data into
    a pipeline from your application, how to read data from a pipeline,
    how to manipulate the pipeline's speed, length, starting point and how
    to listen to a pipeline's data processing.
  </para>

  <sect1 id="section-data-probe">
    <title>Data probes</title>
    <para>
      Probes are best envisioned as pad listeners. They are attached to a
      pad in a pipeline, and you can add callback functions to this probe.
      Those callback functions will be called whenever data is being sent
      over this pad. The callback can then decide whether the data should
      be discarded or it can replace the piece of data with another piece
      of data. In this callback, it can also trigger actions in the
      application itself. For pipeline manipulation, probes are rather
      limited, but for pipeline tracking, they can be very useful.
    </para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="section-data-spoof">
    <title>Manually adding or removing data from/to a pipeline</title>
    <para>
      Many people have expressed the wish to use their own sources to inject
      data into a pipeline. Some people have also expressed the wish to grab
      the output in a pipeline and take care of the actual output inside
      their application. While either of these methods are stongly
      discouraged, &GStreamer; offers hacks to do this. <emphasis>However,
      there is no support for those methods.</emphasis> If it doesn't work,
      you're on your own. Also, synchronization, thread-safety and other
      things that you've been able to take for granted so far are no longer
      guanranteed if you use any of those methods. It's always better to
      simply write a plugin and have the pipeline schedule and manage it.
      See the Plugin Writer's Guide for more information on this topic. Also
      see the next section, which will explain how to embed plugins statically
      in your application.
    </para>
    <para>
      After all those disclaimers, let's start. There's three possible
      elements that you can use for the above-mentioned purposes. Those are
      called <quote>fakesrc</quote> (an imaginary source),
      <quote>fakesink</quote> (an imaginary sink) and <quote>identity</quote>
      (an imaginary filter). The same method applies to each of those
      elements. Here, we will discuss how to use those elements to insert
      (using fakesrc) or grab (using fakesink or identity) data from a
      pipeline, and how to set negotiation.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="section-spoof-handoff">
      <title>Inserting or grabbing data</title>
      <para>
        The three before-mentioned elements (fakesrc, fakesink and identity)
        each have a <quote>handoff</quote> signal that will be called in
        the <function>_get ()</function>- (fakesrc) or <function>_chain
        ()</function>-function (identity, fakesink). In the signal handler,
        you can set (fakesrc) or get (identity, fakesink) data to/from the
        provided buffer. Note that in the case of fakesrc, you have to set
        the size of the provided buffer using the <quote>sizemax</quote>
        property. For both fakesrc and fakesink, you also have to set the
        <quote>signal-handoffs</quote> property for this method to work.
      </para>
      <para>
        Note that your handoff function should <emphasis>not</emphasis>
        block, since this will block pipeline iteration. Also, do not try
        to use all sort of weird hacks in such functions to accomplish
        something that looks like synchronization or so; it's not the right
        way and will lead to issues elsewhere. If you're doing any of this,
        you're basically misunderstanding the &GStreamer; design.
      </para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="section-spoof-format">
      <title>Forcing a format</title>
      <para>
        Sometimes, when using fakesrc as a source in your pipeline, you'll
        want to set a specific format, for example a video size and format
        or an audio bitsize and number of channels. You can do this by
        forcing a specific <classname>GstCaps</classname> on the pipeline,
        which is possible by using <emphasis>filtered caps</emphasis>. You
        can set a filtered caps on a link by using
        <function>gst_pad_link_filtered ()</function>, where the third
        argument is the format to force on the link.
      </para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="section-spoof-example">
      <title>Example application</title>
      <para>
        This example application will generate black/white (it switches
        every second) video to an X-window output by using fakesrc as a
        source and using filtered caps to force a format. Since the depth
        of the image depends on your X-server settings, we use a colorspace
        conversion element to make sure that the output to your X server
        will have the correct bitdepth. You can also set timestamps on the
        provided buffers to override the fixed framerate.
      </para>
      <programlisting><!-- example-begin fakesrc.c -->
#include &lt;string.h&gt; /* for memset () */
#include &lt;gst/gst.h&gt;

static void
cb_handoff (GstElement *fakesrc,
	    GstBuffer  *buffer,
	    GstPad     *pad,
	    gpointer    user_data)
{
  static gboolean white = FALSE;

  /* this makes the image black/white */
  memset (GST_BUFFER_DATA (buffer), white ? 0xff : 0x0,
	  GST_BUFFER_SIZE (buffer));
  white = !white;
}

gint
main (gint   argc,
      gchar *argv[])
{
  GstElement *pipeline, *fakesrc, *conv, *videosink;
  GstCaps *filter;

  /* init GStreamer */
  gst_init (&amp;argc, &amp;argv);

  /* setup pipeline */
  pipeline = gst_pipeline_new ("pipeline");
  fakesrc = gst_element_factory_make ("fakesrc", "source");
  conv = gst_element_factory_make ("ffmpegcolorspace", "conv");
  videosink = gst_element_factory_make ("ximagesink", "videosink");

  /* setup */
  filter = gst_caps_new_simple ("video/x-raw-rgb",
				"width", G_TYPE_INT, 384,
				"height", G_TYPE_INT, 288,
				"framerate", G_TYPE_DOUBLE, (gdouble) 1.0,
				"bpp", G_TYPE_INT, 16,
				"depth", G_TYPE_INT, 16,
				"endianness", G_TYPE_INT, G_BYTE_ORDER,
				NULL);
  gst_element_link_filtered (fakesrc, conv, filter);
  gst_element_link (conv, videosink);
  gst_bin_add_many (GST_BIN (pipeline), fakesrc, conv, videosink, NULL);

  /* setup fake source */
  g_object_set (G_OBJECT (fakesrc),
		"signal-handoffs", TRUE,
		"sizemax", 384 * 288 * 2,
		"sizetype", 2, NULL);
  g_signal_connect (fakesrc, "handoff", G_CALLBACK (cb_handoff), NULL);

  /* play */
  gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_PLAYING);
  while (gst_bin_iterate (GST_BIN (pipeline))) ;

  /* clean up */
  gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_NULL);
  gst_object_unref (GST_OBJECT (pipeline));

  return 0;
}
      <!-- example-end fakesrc.c --></programlisting>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="section-data-manager">
    <title>Embedding static elements in your application</title>
    <para>
      The <ulink type="http"
      url="http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/pwg/html/index.html">Plugin
      Writer's Guide</ulink> describes in great detail how to write elements
      for the &GStreamer; framework. In this section, we will solely discuss
      how to embed such elements statically in your application. This can be
      useful for application-specific elements that have no use elsewhere in
      &GStreamer;.
    </para>
    <para>
      Dynamically loaded plugins contain a structure that's defined using
      <function>GST_PLUGIN_DEFINE ()</function>. This structure is loaded
      when the plugin is loaded by the &GStreamer; core. The structure
      contains an initialization function (usually called
      <function>plugin_init</function>) that will be called right after that.
      It's purpose is to register the elements provided by the plugin with
      the &GStreamer; framework. If you want to embed elements directly in
      your application, the only thing you need to do is to manually run
      this structure using <function>_gst_plugin_register_static
      ()</function>. The initialization will then be called, and the elements
      will from then on be available like any other element, without
      them having to be dynamically loadable libraries. In the example below,
      you would be able to call <function>gst_element_factory_make
      ("my-element-name", "some-name")</function> to create an instance
      of the element.
    </para>
    <programlisting>
/*
 * Here, you would write the actual plugin code.
 */

[..]

static gboolean
register_elements (GstPlugin *plugin)
{
  return gst_element_register (plugin, "my-element-name",
			       GST_RANK_NONE, MY_PLUGIN_TYPE);
}

static GstPluginDesc plugin_desc = {
  GST_VERSION_MAJOR,
  GST_VERSION_MINOR,
  "my-private-plugins",
  "Private elements of my application",
  register_elements,
  NULL,
  "0.0.1",
  "LGPL",
  "my-application",
  "http://www.my-application.net/",
  GST_PADDING_INIT
};

/*
 * Call this function right after calling gst_init ().
 */

void
my_elements_init (void)
{
  _gst_plugin_register_static (&amp;plugin_desc);
}
    </programlisting>
  </sect1>
</chapter>