When writing a GStreamer application, you can simply include gst/gst.h to get access to the library functions. Before the GStreamer libraries can be used gst_init () has to be performed from the main app. this call will perform first initialisation and will parse the GStreamer specific command line options. A typical program would start like this: #include <gst/gst.h> ... int main (int argc, char *argv[]) { ... gst_init (&argc, &argv); ... } It is also possible to call the gst_init method with two NULL argumants. Use the GST_VERSION_MAJOR, GST_VERSION_MINOR and GST_VERSION_MICRO macros to get the GStreamer version you are building against.