Installing on Windows Supported platforms • Windows 7 • Windows 8 • Windows 8.1 • Windows 10 Prerequisites To develop applications using GStreamer for Windows we recommend using or later. Windows Vista may also work but it is not supported. GStreamer binaries includes C headers (.h) and library files (.lib) valid for any version of. For convenience, property pages (.props) are also included which extremely simplify creating new projects. These property pages, though, only work with (including the free ). The recommended system is with (Take a look at its ).

Installing GStreamer for 32-bits platforms requires approximately 286MB of free disk space for the runtime and 207MB for the development files. Installing GStreamer for 64-bits platforms requires approximately 340MB of free disk space for the runtime and 216MB for the development files. Download and install GStreamer binaries There are 3 sets of files in GStreamer binaries: • The runtime files are needed to run GStreamer applications.

You probably want to distribute these files with your application (or the installer below). • The development files are additional files you need to create GStreamer applications. • The files are additional files you can use to deploy GStreamer binaries alongside your application (see ).

Gstreamer is a really great framework for creating multimedia applications on Unix environments and specially useful when dealing with multimedia Embedded Projects. Interfacing with this Embedded Applications from other platforms, rather than Linux, is often a requirement so this is a quick reminder. OpenCV and ffmpeg are great tools especially if you're wanting to do any type of image/video analysis or manipulation. But installing these tools isn't exactly the easiest thing to do either. I went through the pain and here's what I discovered.

Get the Runtime and Development files installers appropriate for your architecture from here: Execute the installers and choose an installation folder. The suggested default is usually OK. `If you plan to use Visual Studio, close it before installing GStreamer. The installer will define new environment variables which will not be picked up by Visual Studio if it is open.

On Windows 8 and Windows 10, it might be necessary to log out and log back in to your account after the installation for the newly defined environment variables to be picked up by Visual Studio. It is the application's responsibility to ensure that, at runtime, GStreamer can access its libraries and plugins. It can be done by adding%GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86% bin to the%PATH% environment variable, or by running the application from this same folder. At runtime, GStreamer will look for its plugins in the following folders: •%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEFOLDER%/.gstreamer-1.0/plugins • C: gstreamer 1.0 x86 lib gstreamer-1.0 •.

Lib gstreamer-1.0 •%GST_PLUGIN_PATH% So, typically, if your application can find libgstreamer-1.0-0.dll, it will find the GStreamer plugins, as long as the installation folder structure is unmodified. If you do change this structure in your application, then you can use the%GST_PLUGIN_PATH% environment variable to point GStreamer to its plugins. The plugins are initially found at%GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86% lib gstreamer-1.0. Additionally, if you want to prevent GStreamer from looking in all the default folders listed above, you can set the%GST_PLUGIN_SYSTEM_PATH% environment variable to point where the plugins are located.

Configure your development environment Building the tutorials The tutorials code, along with project files and a solution file for Visual Studio 2010, are in the in the examples/tutorials folder. In order to prevent accidental modification of the original code, and to make sure Visual Studio has the necessary permissions to write the output files, copy the entire tutorials folder to a place of your liking, and work from there. 64-bit Users Use%GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86_64% if you have installed GStreamer binaries for 64-bit platforms. Both GStreamer binariess (32 and 64-bit) can be installed simultaneously, and hence the separate environment variables. Make sure you select the Solution Configuration that matches GStreamer that you have installed: Win32 for 32 bits or x64 for 64 bits. Andromeda Shadow Plug In Coolers. You can fire up Visual Studio 2010 and load your copy of the tutorials.sln solution file (Click on the screen shots to enlarge them). Hit F7, press the Build Solution button or go to Build → Build Solution.

All projects should build without problems. Running the tutorials In order to run the tutorials, we will set the current working directory to%GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86% bin in the Debugging section of the project properties.

This property is not stored in the project files, so you will need to manually add it to every tutorial you want to run from within Visual Studio. Right click on a project in the Solution Explorer, Properties → Debugging → Working Directory, and type $(GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86) bin (The $(.) notation is required to access environment variables from within Visual Studio. You use the%.% notation from Windows Explorer) You should now be able to run the tutorials. Creating new projects manually If you want to create 64-bit applications, remember also to create x64 Solution and Project configurations as explained. Include the necessary GStreamer Property Sheet The included property sheets make creating new projects extremely easy. In Visual Studio 2010 create a new project (Normally a Win32 Console or Win32 Application).

Then go to the Property Manager (View→Property Manager), right-click on your project and select “Add Existing Property Sheet.”. Navigate to%GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86% share vs 2010 libs and load gstreamer-1.0.props This property sheet contains the directories where the headers and libraries are located, and the necessary options for the compiler and linker, so you do not need to change anything else in your project. If you cannot find the Property Manager, you might need to enable Expert Settings. Go to Tools → Settings → Expert Settings.

Upon first installation of Visual Studio, Expert Settings are disabled by default. Depending on the GStreamer libraries you need to use, you will have to add more property pages, besides gstreamer-1.0 (each property page corresponds to one GStreamer library). The tutorial's project files already contain all necessary property pages. When developing your own applications, the GStreamer documentation will tell you what library a function belongs to, and therefore, what property pages you need to add. Remove the dependency with the Visual Studio runtime At this point, you have a working environment, which you can test by running the tutorials.

However, there is a last step remaining. Applications built with Visual C++ 2010 depend on the Visual C++ 2010 Runtime, which is a DLL that gets installed when you install Visual Studio.

If you were to distribute your application, you would need to distribute this DLL with it (What is known as the ). This happens with every version of Visual Studio, and the Runtime DLL is different for every version of Visual Studio. Furthermore, GStreamer itself is built using a “basic” C runtime which comes in every Windows system since Windows XP, and is named MSVCRT. O. DLL.

If your application and GStreamer do not use the same C Runtime, problems are bound to crop out. In order to avoid these issues you must instruct your application to use the system's C Runtime. First install the (DDK). When the installer asks about the features, select only “Build Environments”. Accept the suggested location for the installation, which is usually C: WinDDK 7600.16385.1.

This download is an ISO file, you can either burn a DVD with it (as recommended in the Microsoft site. You will need DVD burning software), mount the file in a virtual DVD device (you will need DVD virtualization software) or unpack the file as if it was a regular compressed file (you will need decompression software that understands the ISO format). Then, add the x86.props or x86_64.props (for 32 or 64 bits) property sheet found in%GSTREAMER_ROOT_X86%`` ``share vs 2010 msvc to your project. This will make your application use the ubiquitous MSVCRT.DLL saving you some troubles in the future. If you did not install the WinDDK to the standard path C: WinDDK 7600.16385.1, you will need to tell Visual Studio where it is. Unfortunately, there is no automated way to do this.

Once you have added the x86.props or x86_64.props to your project, go to the Property Manager, expand your project and its subfolders until you find the property sheet called config. Double click to edit it, and select the section called “User Macros” in the list on the left. You should see a macro called WINDOWS_DRIVER_KIT.

Double click to edit it, and set its value to the root folder where you installed the DDK. This is the folder containing a file called samples.txt. Accept the changes, right click on the config property sheet and select “Save”. The path to the DDK is now stored in config.props and you do not need to perform this operation anymore. Creating new projects using the wizard Go to File → New → Project and you should find a template named GStreamer Project.

It takes no parameters, and sets all necessary project settings, both for 32 and 64 bits architectures. The generated project file includes the two required Property Sheets described in the previous section, so, in order to link to the correct MSVCRT.DLL, you still need to install the Windows Device Driver Kit and change the appropriate property sheets.

Getting GStreamer How do I get GStreamer? Generally speaking, you have three options, ranging from easy to hard: • • • • What is the difference between versions 0.10 and 1.0? There seem to be different GStreamer versions, like 0.10 and 1.0?

What's up with that? GStreamer-0.10 and GStreamer-1.0 are the main version 'series' currently in use. For all practical purposes you should think of them as two completely different libraries which just happen to have a similar name.

They can be installed in parallel and are completely independent. GStreamer 1.x has been the main stable series since 2012.

GStreamer 0.10 is no longer maintained. For the 0.10 version you will need the 0.10 plugins and bindings (gst-plugins 0.10.x, gst-ffmpeg 0.10.x, gst-python 0.10.x etc.), while for the 1.0 version you will need the 1.0 plugins and bindings (ie. Gst-plugins-base 1.0.x, gst-plugins-good 1.0.x, gst-plugins-ugly 1.0.x, gst-plugins-bad 1.0.x, gst-ffmpeg 1.0.x, gst-python 1.0.x). The micro version for each main version does not have to match exactly, only the major versions needs to be the same (ie. It may be that the current gst-plugins-good version is 1.0.6 and the current GStreamer core version is 1.0.13).

GStreamer-1.0 will not see or use any of the GStreamer-0.10 plugins and vice versa. All GStreamer command line tools are suffixed with their main version, e.g. Gst-launch-1.0 and gst-inspect-1.0.

Applications will use either GStreamer-1.0 or GStreamer-0.10, since the 1.0 and 0.10 API/ABI are not compatible. Odd-numbered versions such as 0.9.x, 0.11.x, 1.3.x, 1.5.x, 1.7.x etc. Are unstable developer releases that should generally not be used. So which GStreamer version should I get?

You should download GStreamer 1.x. GStreamer-0.10 is no longer maintained. How can I install GStreamer from source? We provide tarballs of our releases on our own site, at When compiling from source, make sure you set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable correctly to the pkgconfig subdir of your install prefix's libdir, to make sure your newly-installed GStreamer versions are picked up when building against GStreamer. For example, if you configured GStreamer with the default prefix (which is /usr/local), then you need to: export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig before building GStreamer plugin modules. After installing GStreamer from source on Linux, run sudo ldconfig to make sure your new libs will be found. Please note that GStreamer is not an easy thing to build from source, since it has so many interconnected pieces from multiple modules, which must all be installed just right and must all find each other in the right versions.

If you have GStreamer already installed from packages, it is strongly recommended that you find newer packages instead of installing from source, or upgrade to a distro version that ships newer packages. Installing from source into one prefix with distro packages in another prefix can cause problems if it's not done right, and it is very difficult for anyone to provide help with such a setup. Are there premade binaries available? Yes, we currently provide. We currently do not provide packages for Linux distributions, but rather rely on the distributions for that. GStreamer packages should be available for all major (and minor) distributions. Why don't you provide premade binaries for distribution XY?

GStreamer is run on a volunteer basis. The packages that are provided are made by non-paid people who do this on their own time.

The distributions we support with binaries are the distributions that we have people who have volunteered to make binaries for. If you are interested in maintaining GStreamer binaries for other distributions or Unices we would be happy to hear from you. Contact us through the GStreamer-devel mailing list. I am having trouble compiling GStreamer on my LFS installation, why? If you are running LFS our basic opinion is that you should be knowledgeable enough to solve any build issues you get on your own. Being volunteered based we can't promise support to anyone of course, but are you using LFS consider yourself extra unsupported.

We neither can or want to know enough, about how your unique system is configured, to be able to help you. That said, if you come to the #gstreamer channel on irc.openprojects.net we might of course be able to give you some general hints and pointers. How do I get GStreamer through git?

See this page: for git access (anonymous and developer).