GST cookbook

In addition to being a powerful multimedia infrastructure for applications Gstreamer is also a useful tool for general manipulations of multimedia data. By invoking gst-launch from the command-line with a custom pipeline many useful processing steps are possible.

Gstreamer also usually has good support for Xiph-related formats.

Unfortunately, it can be rather difficult to figure out an appropriate pipeline without a starting point.

Here are some useful examples:

Encode a .wav to Vorbis:

gst-launch filesrc location="INPUT.wav" ! wavparse ! audioconvert ! vorbisenc ! oggmux ! filesink location="OUTPUT.ogg"

Dump a Theora video to PNGs:

gst-launch filesrc location="INPUT.ogv" ! oggdemux ! theoradec ! ffmpegcolorspace ! pngenc snapshot=false ! multifilesink location="OUTPUT%04d.png"

Transmux a MKV (containing vorbis and theora) to Ogg:

gst-launch filesrc location="INPUT.mkv" ! matroskademux name=d ! video/x-theora ! queue ! theoraparse ! oggmux name=mux ! filesink location="OUTPUT.ogv" d. ! audio/x-vorbis ! queue ! vorbisparse ! queue ! mux.

Encode a y4m to lossless Dirac in Ogg:

gst-launch filesrc location="INPUT.y4m" ! decodebin ! schroenc force-profile=vc2_main rate-control=lossless ! oggmux ! filesink location="OUTPUT.ogv"

Pull from a windows media stream, transcode to Ogg/Thera+Vorbis and send to a icecast server:

(requires purchasing fluendo plugins for decoding the encumbered codecs)

gst-launch uridecodebin uri=mms://SOURCE.SERVER.COM/path name=d ! queue max-size-time=100000000 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! theoraenc bitrate=800 ! oggmux name=mux ! shout2send ip=YOURICECAST.SERVER.COM port=8000 password=YOURPASSWORD mount=/OUTPUTFILENAME.ogv d. ! queue max-size-time=100000000 ! audioconvert ! vorbisenc ! mux.