March 6, 2018
HomeGstreamerHow to install Gstreamer on Ubuntu

How to install Gstreamer on Ubuntu

By  Gstreamer, Tutorials  35 Comments

2 min. read

Gstreamer is essential package for Ubuntu, but there could be some missing packages that are required for app development. So with next steps you are going to install Gstreamer on your PC.

Guide

Dockerfile

Checkout Dockerfile to build Docker Image for Ubuntu 18 and Gstreamer.

docker build -t gstreamer:latest /path/to/Dockerfile

xhost +local:  # To enable UI

sudo docker run --name ubuntu-gstreamer -it -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY -v /tmp/.X11-unix/:/tmp/.X11-unix gstreamer:latest

Note: For Ubuntu 16.04 checkout Dockerfile

Go to Launch First Pipeline Section to check installation.

Locate Gstreamer

Check if any version of Gstreamer already installed

which gst-launch-1.0

If you see similar response

/usr/local/bin/gst-launch-1.0

You already have Gstreamer installed on your PC. But look at next steps to check that all required packages for development are also installed.

Check Gstreamer Version

Additional you can check version of installed package typing

gst-inspect-1.0 --version

You should get similar response in terminal

gst-inspect-1.0 version 1.14.1
GStreamer 1.14.1 (GIT)

Install Gstreamer

Update Packages

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get build-essential
sudo apt-get pkg-config

Install main Gstreamer packages (*source)

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-0 gstreamer1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-doc
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good 
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly 
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-doc gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-x gstreamer1.0-alsa gstreamer1.0-gl gstreamer1.0-gtk3 gstreamer1.0-qt5 gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio

Have you noticed words ‘bad, ugly, good’ in libraries names? Don’t worry, those are not based on personal qualities 🙂 Here is an official doocumentation with explanation of each module and it’s name.

  • gst-plugins-good – a set of good-quality plug-ins under our preferred license, LGPL
  • gst-plugins-ugly – a set of good-quality plug-ins that might pose distribution problems
  • gst-plugins-bad – a set of plug-ins that need more quality, testing or documentation

Launch first pipeline

Type in command line simple command to check that everything works as supposed:

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! autovideosink

Expected result should be something like this:

videotestsrc Gstreamer plugin

In case you installing Gstreamer on remote PC without any display, use fakesink instead of autovideosink.

Hope everything works just great and you are ready to make some awesome applications. If not, – leave a problem description in comments to this post. We are going to find a way to fix it 🙂

FAQ

How to build Gstreamer from Sources?

  • If there is a need to build gstreamer from sources, use the following guide

How to build Gstreamer for Python?

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35 Comments
  1. Yaroslav

    Hi Taras. Thanks for a neat and simple tutorial!
    Could you also share your overall experience with GStreamer? How easy is to set up a simple pipeline to detect person faces on the video feed?

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hi, Yaroslav.
      Thank you for question.
      I started working with Gstreamer just a year ago. But I think Gstreamer is very powerful tool for data processing and analysis.
      Now, I’m working on some interesting (open-source) projects to share. But you can look here – https://github.com/jackersson/gst-filter. Use it as simple Gstreamer setup in Python with OpenCV.

      Reply
      • Yaroslav

        Oh, thanks, Taras! This is what I needed

        Reply
  2. davide

    Thank you for sharing superb informations. Your web site is so cool. I am impressed by the details that you’ve on this web site. It reveals how nicely you perceive this subject. Bookmarked this web page, will come back for more articles. You, my pal, ROCK! I found just the information I already searched everywhere and simply could not come across. What a perfect website.

    Reply
  3. Mo Ehab

    after running : gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! autovideosink
    I got this error and no window shows, any help with that?

    Setting pipeline to PAUSED …
    Pipeline is PREROLLING …
    Got context from element ‘autovideosink0’: gst.gl.GLDisplay=context, gst.gl.GLDisplay=(GstGLDisplay)”\(GstGLDisplayX11\)\ gldisplayx11-0″;
    XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server “:0.0”
    after 23 requests (22 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      It seems like you are using Gstreamer on Remote PC without desktop. If it so, you can’t run any plugin that involves GUI. So, the best choice is to substitute autovideosink with fakesink (that will drop buffers instead of showing them in window)

      Hope it helped)

      Reply
  4. Balasaheb

    thanks ….it worked for me

    Reply
  5. David

    Hi Taras. Thanks for this tutorial!
    I’m trying to add libx265.so which built from x265 source (https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265/wiki/Home) to pipeline and still stucking . Could you help me?

    Reply
  6. David

    Hi Taras. Thanks for this tutorial!
    I’m trying to add libx265.so which built from x265 source (https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265/wiki/Home) to my GSTREAMER pipeline and still stucking. Could you help me?

    Reply
  7. schoonheidssalon

    Keep up the good work! Thanks.

    Reply
  8. Naked Nerds

    It’s hard to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you seem like
    you know what you’re talking about! Thanks

    Reply
  9. Dan Smith

    Worked for me, thanks!

    Reply
  10. Igal Kroyter

    Hi, do you know why the gstproxy package (proxysink, proxysrc) and the ipcpipeline package are not instllaed on Ubuntu 16.04?

    Reply
  11. Jeff

    Hi, there! I have a question. I want to instal gst-python from https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/gst-python/, but it as I typed sh ./configure, it said checking for gstreamer-0.6 >= 0.6.0… configure: error: you need gstreamer development packages installed !… But I already install everything as this website says. Do you have any idea?

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hi, Jeff

      It seems that you are trying to build gst-python against older version of gstreamer (that installed in your system). To check gstreamer version just type:
      gst-launch-1.0 --version

      And with:
      git branch
      or
      git checkout -b {gstreamer-version}

      Specify the right branch for building gst-python

      Hope this helps 😉

      Reply
  12. Jim

    Hi Taras,

    After running gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc | autovideosink, I get
    ERROR: from element /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstVideoTestSrc:videotestsrc0: Internal data stream error.
    Additional debug info:
    gstbasesrc.c(3072): gst_base_src_loop (): /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstVideoTestSrc:videotestsrc0:
    streaming stopped, reason not-linked (-1)
    autovideosink: command not found

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hi Jim,

      Check if package gstreamer1.0-plugins-good installed. Autovideosink is a part of that package.
      If there will be any problem, please check installation requirements for Gstreamer on Ubuntu 18: https://bit.ly/2Meo8xP

      Hope this helps 🙂

      Reply
  13. agri-partner

    Thank you very much for the content. I wish you continued success.

    Reply
  14. FG

    Hi Taras

    Your tutorial is very complete, but for some reason, it did not solve my problem. I am trying to use a package named pocketsphynx with ROS to make speech to text than send the commands to my mobile robot. This package has pygst as depedency. When i try to run it (or if i check the directly with python i get the following result )

    python
    Python 2.7.17 (default, Nov 7 2019, 10:07:09)
    [GCC 7.4.0] on linux2
    Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
    >>> import pygst
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “”, line 1, in
    ImportError: No module named pygst

    Note 1: I am using Ubuntu 18.
    Note 2: In the installation process i have errors while installing
    sudo apt-get install libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
    E: Unable to locate package libgstreamer0.10-dev
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘libgstreamer0.10-dev’
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘libgstreamer0.10-dev’
    E: Unable to locate package libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev’
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev’

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hi,

      For proper Gstreamer installation I use dependency like in this DockerFile: https://bit.ly/2Meo8xP . Hope this helps!
      If every dependency installed well, please tell me which project you are trying to launch and facing problem with pygst package?

      Reply
  15. Anas Kanhouch

    I have installed it on Ubuntu 16.04 but could not be able to install these packages :
    E: Unable to locate package gstreamer1.0-gl
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘gstreamer1.0-gl’
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘gstreamer1.0-gl’
    E: Unable to locate package gstreamer1.0-gtk3
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘gstreamer1.0-gtk3’
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘gstreamer1.0-gtk3’
    E: Unable to locate package gstreamer1.0-qt5
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘gstreamer1.0-qt5’
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘gstreamer1.0-qt5’

    Could not find any solution on Google also.

    All other than these three packages I have installed, and tried the test
    gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! autovideosink
    It give me this error:
    ERROR: pipeline could not be constructed: no element “videotestsrc”.

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hey Anas,

      For Ubuntu 16 checkout Dockerfile. There are some differences in packages, so it a bit changed for Ubuntu 16.

      Hope this helps 😉

      Reply
      • Anas Kanhouch

        Thank you, I have installed the packages on a fresh 16.04 Ubuntu and test it using gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! autovideosink and it works as expected
        Thanks alot for your help.

        Reply
        • taras.lishchenko

          Great 🙂
          Glad it helped!

          Reply
  16. sai

    hi, iam trying to run gstreamer on google colab and while iam running this command ” !gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! autovideosink” iam getting this error “XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment”. this is the first time iam working with gstreamer and please help me with the issue..thanks in advance!

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hi Sai,

      This error means that server PC have no connected display. And autovideosink plugin is specifically designed to display video. So I suggest you to use fakesink instead:
      ! gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! fakesink

      Tested in this Colab 🙂

      If you want to display result you have 2 options:
      – record video into a file and display it with IPython.display solution
      – of use “appsink” plugin to receive buffer from pipeline and refresh IPython.display (Check “How to work with appsink“)

      Best regards,

      Reply
  17. sai

    hey taras,thanks for the reply!! so with fakesink we cannot see the video but we can only see wether the pipeline is running properly or not right(correct me if iam wrong)? and if i need to setup the same gstreamer with python bindings in windows,apart from the official documentation can i get any other sources or guides for installation in windows?because the process in documentation seems to be quite confusing and i couldnt find any proper resources apart from this link-https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17278953/gstreamer-python-bindings-for-windows.

    Reply
  18. sarat

    Hi, when i was trying to play two videos at a time ,one video is getting black and the other is playing.i couldn’t able to figure it out.here is my pipeline

    gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=”play.mp4″ ! decodebin ! queue ! videobox border-alpha=0 right=-960 ! videomixer name=mix ! autovideosink filesrc location=”entrance_inside.mp4″ ! decodebin ! queue ! videobox border-alpha=0 left=-960 ! mix.

    please help me with my problem..

    Reply
    • taras.lishchenko

      Hi Sarat,

      For me the following command worked:
      gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! video/x-raw,height=540,width=960 ! queue ! videobox border-alpha=0 left=-960 ! videomixer name=mix ! autovideosink videotestsrc pattern=ball ! video/x-raw,height=540,width=960 ! decodebin ! queue ! videobox border-alpha=0 left=0 ! mix.

      To remember, just imaging that next command expanding your width to 960 from left with black image (1). So now image (960×2)x540
      videobox border-alpha=0 left=-960

      And this, do nothing to image (2), 960×540:
      videobox border-alpha=0 left=0

      Then, mixer just blends them: black part from (1) to be replaced by image from (2).

      An example with video files

      Best regards,

      Reply
      • sarat

        thanks taras for the rly..it is working with one modification for the pipeline you wrote.

        Reply
        • taras.lishchenko

          Hi Sarat,

          I’m glad to hear 😉
          What did you change?

          Reply
          • sarat

            since i am using my local videos i used two decodebins ,and it worked for me.

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