gstreamer/subprojects/gst-plugins-base/NEWS

GStreamer 1.20 Release Notes

GStreamer 1.20 has not been released yet. It is scheduled for release in
November 2021.

1.19.x is the unstable development version that is being developed in
the git main branch and which will eventually result in 1.20, and 1.19.3
is the current development release in that series

It is expected that feature freeze will be in early October 2021,
followed by one or two 1.19.9x pre-releases and the new 1.20 stable
release around October/November 2021.

1.20 will be backwards-compatible to the stable 1.18, 1.16, 1.14, 1.12,
1.10, 1.8, 1.6,, 1.4, 1.2 and 1.0 release series.

See https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/releases/1.20/ for the latest
version of this document.

Last updated: Monday 1 November 2021, 01:00 UTC (log)

Introduction

The GStreamer team is proud to announce a new major feature release in
the stable 1.x API series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia
framework!

As always, this release is again packed with many new features, bug
fixes and other improvements.

Highlights

-   this section will be completed in due course

Major new features and changes

Noteworthy new features and API

-   this section will be filled in in due course

New elements

-   this section will be filled in in due course

New element features and additions

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Plugin and library moves

-   this section will be filled in in due course

-   There were no plugin moves or library moves in this cycle.

Plugin removals

The following elements or plugins have been removed:

-   this section will be filled in in due course

-   The ofa audio fingerprinting plugin has been removed. The MusicIP
    database has been defunct for years so this plugin is likely neither
    useful nor used by anyone.

-   The mms plugin containing mmssrc has been removed. It seems unlikely
    anyone still needs this or that there are even any streams left out
    there. The MMS protocol was deprecated in 2003 (in favour of RTSP)
    and support for it was dropped with Microsoft Media Services 2008,
    and Windows Media Player apparently also does not support it any
    more.

Miscellaneous API additions

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Miscellaneous performance, latency and memory optimisations

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Miscellaneous other changes and enhancements

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Tracing framework and debugging improvements

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Tools

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer RTSP server

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer VAAPI

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer OMX

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer Editing Services and NLE

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer validate

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer Python Bindings

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer C# Bindings

-   this section will be filled in in due course

GStreamer Rust Bindings and Rust Plugins

The GStreamer Rust bindings are released separately with a different
release cadence that’s tied to gtk-rs, but the latest release has
already been updated for the upcoming new GStreamer 1.20 API.

gst-plugins-rs, the module containing GStreamer plugins written in Rust,
has also seen lots of activity with many new elements and plugins.

What follows is a list of elements and plugins available in
gst-plugins-rs, so people don’t miss out on all those potentially useful
elements that have no C equivalent.

-   FIXME: add new elements

Rust audio plugins

-   audiornnoise: New element for audio denoising which implements the
    noise removal algorithm of the Xiph RNNoise library, in Rust
-   rsaudioecho: Port of the audioecho element from gst-plugins-good
    rsaudioloudnorm: Live audio loudness normalization element based on
    the FFmpeg af_loudnorm filter
-   claxondec: FLAC lossless audio codec decoder element based on the
    pure-Rust claxon implementation
-   csoundfilter: Audio filter that can use any filter defined via the
    Csound audio programming language
-   lewtondec: Vorbis audio decoder element based on the pure-Rust
    lewton implementation

Rust video plugins

-   cdgdec/cdgparse: Decoder and parser for the CD+G video codec based
    on a pure-Rust CD+G implementation, used for example by karaoke CDs
-   cea608overlay: CEA-608 Closed Captions overlay element
-   cea608tott: CEA-608 Closed Captions to timed-text (e.g. VTT or SRT
    subtitles) converter
-   tttocea608: CEA-608 Closed Captions from timed-text converter
-   mccenc/mccparse: MacCaption Closed Caption format encoder and parser
-   sccenc/sccparse: Scenarist Closed Caption format encoder and parser
-   dav1dec: AV1 video decoder based on the dav1d decoder implementation
    by the VLC project
-   rav1enc: AV1 video encoder based on the fast and pure-Rust rav1e
    encoder implementation
-   rsflvdemux: Alternative to the flvdemux FLV demuxer element from
    gst-plugins-good, not feature-equivalent yet
-   rsgifenc/rspngenc: GIF/PNG encoder elements based on the pure-Rust
    implementations by the image-rs project

Rust text plugins

-   textwrap: Element for line-wrapping timed text (e.g. subtitles) for
    better screen-fitting, including hyphenation support for some
    languages

Rust network plugins

-   reqwesthttpsrc: HTTP(S) source element based on the Rust
    reqwest/hyper HTTP implementations and almost feature-equivalent
    with the main GStreamer HTTP source souphttpsrc
-   s3src/s3sink: Source/sink element for the Amazon S3 cloud storage
-   awstranscriber: Live audio to timed text transcription element using
    the Amazon AWS Transcribe API

Generic Rust plugins

-   sodiumencrypter/sodiumdecrypter: Encryption/decryption element based
    on libsodium/NaCl
-   togglerecord: Recording element that allows to pause/resume
    recordings easily and considers keyframe boundaries
-   fallbackswitch/fallbacksrc: Elements for handling potentially
    failing (network) sources, restarting them on errors/timeout and
    showing a fallback stream instead
-   threadshare: Set of elements that provide alternatives for various
    existing GStreamer elements but allow to share the streaming threads
    between each other to reduce the number of threads
-   rsfilesrc/rsfilesink: File source/sink elements as replacements for
    the existing filesrc/filesink elements

Build and Dependencies

-   Meson 0.59 or newer is required to build GStreamer now.

-   FIXME: this section will be filled in in due course

Explicit opt-in required for build of certain plugins with (A)GPL dependencies

Some plugins have GPL- or AGPL-licensed dependencies and those plugins
will no longer be built by default unless you have explicitly opted in
to allow (A)GPL-licensed dependencies by passing -Dgpl=enabled to Meson,
even if the required dependencies are available.

See Building plugins with (A)GPL-licensed dependencies for more details
and a non-exhaustive list of plugins affected.

gst-build: replaced by Monorepo

-   this section will be filled in in due course

-   FIXME: describe + link to Monorepo FAQ

Cerbero

Cerbero is a meta build system used to build GStreamer plus dependencies
on platforms where dependencies are not readily available, such as
Windows, Android, iOS and macOS.

General improvements

-   this section will be filled in in due course

macOS / iOS

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Windows

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Windows MSI installer

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Linux

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Android

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Platform-specific changes and improvements

Android

-   this section will be filled in in due course

macOS and iOS

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Windows

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Linux

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Documentation improvements

-   this section will be filled in in due course

Possibly Breaking Changes

-   FIXME: this section will be filled in in due course
-   MPEG-TS SCTE-35 API changes (FIXME: flesh out)
-   gst_parse_launch() and friends now error out on non-existing
    properties on top-level bins where they would silently fail and
    ignore those before.
-   playbin and uridecodebin now emit the source-setup signal before the
    element is added to the bin and linked so that the source element is
    already configured before any scheduling query comes in, which is
    useful for elements such as appsrc or giostreamsrc. (Merge Request)

Known Issues

-   this section will be filled in in due course

-   There are a couple of known WebRTC-related regressions/blockers:

    -   webrtc: DTLS setup with Chrome is broken
    -   webrtcbin: First keyframe is usually lost

Contributors

-   this section will be filled in in due course

… and many others who have contributed bug reports, translations, sent
suggestions or helped testing.

Stable 1.20 branch

After the 1.20.0 release there will be several 1.20.x bug-fix releases
which will contain bug fixes which have been deemed suitable for a
stable branch, but no new features or intrusive changes will be added to
a bug-fix release usually. The 1.20.x bug-fix releases will be made from
the git 1.20 branch, which will be a stable branch.

1.20.0

1.20.0 is scheduled to be released around October/November 2021.

Schedule for 1.22

Our next major feature release will be 1.22, and 1.21 will be the
unstable development version leading up to the stable 1.22 release. The
development of 1.21/1.22 will happen in the git main branch.

The plan for the 1.22 development cycle is yet to be confirmed.

1.22 will be backwards-compatible to the stable 1.20, 1.18, 1.16, 1.14,
1.12, 1.10, 1.8, 1.6, 1.4, 1.2 and 1.0 release series.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

These release notes have been prepared by Tim-Philipp Müller with
contributions from …

License: CC BY-SA 4.0