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50 lines
1.8 KiB
XML
50 lines
1.8 KiB
XML
<chapter id="chapter-bins">
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<title>Bins</title>
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<para>
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A bin is a container element. You can add elements to a bin. Since a bin is
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an element itself, it can also be added to another bin.
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</para>
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<para>
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Bins allow you to combine a group of linked elements into one logical element. You do
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not deal with the individual elements anymore but with just one element, the bin.
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We will see that this is extremely powerful when you are going to construct
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complex pipelines since it allows you to break up the pipeline in smaller chunks.
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</para>
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<para>
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The bin will also manage the elements contained in it. It will figure out how
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the data will flow in the bin and generate an optimal plan for that data flow. Plan
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generation is one of the most complicated procedures in GStreamer.
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</para>
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<figure float="1" id="section-bin-img">
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<title>Visualisation of a bin with some elements in it</title>
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<mediaobject>
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<imageobject>
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<imagedata fileref="images/bin-element.ℑ" format="&IMAGE;" />
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</imageobject>
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</mediaobject>
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</figure>
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<para>
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There are two specialized bins available to the GStreamer programmer:
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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a pipeline: a generic container that allows scheduling of the
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containing elements. The toplevel bin has to be a pipeline.
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Every application thus needs at least one of these.
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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a thread: a bin that will be run in a separate execution thread.
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You will have to use this bin if you have to carefully
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synchronize audio and video, or for buffering. You will learn
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more about threads in <xref linkend="chapter-threads"/>.
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</para>
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</chapter>
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