Element states

Once you have created a pipeline packed with elements, nothing will happen right away. This is where the different states come into play.

The different element states

An element can be in one of the following four states:

All elements start with the NULL state. The elements will go throught the following state changes: NULL -> READY -> PAUSED -> PLAYING. When going from NULL to PLAYING, GStreamer will internally go throught the intermediate states.

You can set the following states on an element:

GST_STATE_NULLReset the state of an element.
GST_STATE_READYwill make the element ready to start processing data.
GST_STATE_PAUSEDtemporarily stops the data flow.
GST_STATE_PLAYINGmeans there really is data flowing through the graph.