The event function notifies you of special events that happen in the datastream (such as caps, end-of-stream, newsegment, tags, etc.). Events can travel both upstream and downstream, so you can receive them on sink pads as well as source pads. Below follows a very simple event function that we install on the sink pad of our element. static gboolean gst_my_filter_sink_event (GstPad *pad, GstObject *parent, GstBuffer *buf); [..] static void gst_my_filter_init (GstMyFilter * filter) { [..] /* configure event function on the pad before adding * the pad to the element */ gst_pad_set_event_function (filter->sinkpad, gst_my_filter_sink_event); [..] } static gboolean gst_my_filter_sink_event (GstPad *pad, GstObject *parent, GstEvent *event) { gboolean ret; GstMyFilter *filter = GST_MY_FILTER (parent); switch (GST_EVENT_TYPE (event)) { case GST_EVENT_CAPS: /* we should handle the format here */ /* push the event downstream */ ret = gst_pad_push_event (filter->srcpad, event); break; case GST_EVENT_EOS: /* end-of-stream, we should close down all stream leftovers here */ gst_my_filter_stop_processing (filter); ret = gst_pad_event_default (pad, parent, event); break; default: /* just call the default handler */ ret = gst_pad_event_default (pad, parent, event); break; } return ret; } It is a good idea to call the default event handler gst_pad_event_default () for unknown events. Depending on the event type, the default handler will forward the event or simply unref it. The CAPS event is by default not forwarded so we need to do this in the event handler ourselves.