diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index fd5898880f..e678567c69 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+2004-05-03  Johan Dahlin  <johan@gnome.org>
+
+	* gst/schedulers/gstoptimalscheduler.c
+	(gst_opt_scheduler_pad_unlink): Check if element is non-NULL and
+	really is a GstElement. Avoids critical when running gst-launch -v
+	and a oggdemux/decoding pipeline.
+
 2004-05-02  Stephane Loeuillet <stephane.loeuillet@tiscali.fr>
 
 	* docs/gst/tmpl/gstpipeline.sgml :
diff --git a/gst/schedulers/gstoptimalscheduler.c b/gst/schedulers/gstoptimalscheduler.c
index d58ab63b20..cb927bfaba 100644
--- a/gst/schedulers/gstoptimalscheduler.c
+++ b/gst/schedulers/gstoptimalscheduler.c
@@ -2186,7 +2186,8 @@ gst_opt_scheduler_pad_unlink (GstScheduler * sched,
         for (l = group->elements; l && l->data; l = l->next) {
           GstElement *element = (GstElement *) l->data;
 
-          if (GST_ELEMENT_IS_DECOUPLED (element))
+          if (!element || !GST_IS_ELEMENT (element) ||
+              GST_ELEMENT_IS_DECOUPLED (element))
             continue;
 
           linkcount = 0;