All plugins should implement one function, plugin_init, that creates all the element factories and registers all the type definitions contained in the plugin. Without this function, a plugin cannot be registered. The plugins are maintained in the plugin system. Optionally, the type definitions and the element factories can be saved into an XML representation so that the plugin system does not have to load all available plugins in order to know their definition. The basic plugin structure has the following fields: typedef struct _GstPlugin GstPlugin; struct _GstPlugin { gchar *name; /* name of the plugin */ gchar *longname; /* long name of plugin */ gchar *filename; /* filename it came from */ GList *types; /* list of types provided */ gint numtypes; GList *elements; /* list of elements provided */ gint numelements; GList *autopluggers; /* list of autopluggers provided */ gint numautopluggers; gboolean loaded; /* if the plugin is in memory */ }; You can query a GList of available plugins with the function gst_plugin_get_list as this example shows: GList *plugins; plugins = gst_plugin_get_list (); while (plugins) { GstPlugin *plugin = (GstPlugin *)plugins->data; g_print ("plugin: %s\n", gst_plugin_get_name (plugin)); plugins = g_list_next (plugins); }