GStreamer is just a different front end to ffmpeg.
ffmpeg's core functionality (encode, decode, streams, pipes, channels) are all implemented in `libav` which gstreamer links against.
GStreamer is just a different front end to ffmpeg.
ffmpeg's core functionality (encode, decode, streams, pipes, channels) are all implemented in `libav` which gstreamer links against.
GStreamer doesn’t use ffmpeg’s pipeline at all. It implements a much more advanced directed graph with disconnect, connection and pad negotiation. You can dynamically swap out the entire filter graph during live playback with zero disruption. Swap feeds, outputs, effects… all at runtime.
ffmpeg and other media frameworks (Windows Media Foundation, Apple’s AVFramwork) only support static pipelines. You can use “switcher” components but the inputs are still static.
GStreamer is extremely special. The only thing that comes close was Microsoft’s DirectShow, which has since been replaced with Media Foundation which can’t do it. And while DirectShow did support it, it was fragile because many 3rd party filters did not support dynamic configuration.
GStreamer does use ffmpeg, but it just wraps the core encoder/decoder/filter code and discards the streams/graph/pipe part of ffmpeg.
> ffmpeg and other media frameworks (Windows Media Foundation, Apple’s AVFramwork) only support static pipelines.
FFmpeg doesn't do “pipelines”. It's a library, not a framework.
It's also a command line tool, where you can design (limited) media graphs: sources, sinks, filters, encoders, decoders, muxers, demuxers. You don't express it as directly as gst-launch's pipeline syntax, but it's very much a pipeline.
GStreamer is not "just a different front end to ffmpeg". GStreamer is a pluggable media graph system.
"GStreamer" doesn't link against libav. The GStreamer plugin "gst-libav" links against libav. If you're not using the gst-libav, you're not using ffmpeg. I'd bet a relatively small amount of GStreamer use cases use gst-libav; I typically see people use e.g x264dec and x264enc (from the x264 plugin) to decode and encode media, or, for hardware encoding/decoding, the v4l2enc and v4l2dec elements (or elements from a SoC vendor's plug-in such as gst-rockchip). It also has its own non-libav elements to handle container formats, pixel format conversion, scaling, etc, which are more natural to use since they're part of the core gstreamer plug-in packages rather than gst-libav.