[GStreamer] State of Element

• GST_STATE_NULL: this is the default state. No resources are allocated in this state, so, transitioning to it will free all resources. The element must be in this state when its refcount reaches 0 and it is freed.

• GST_STATE_READY: in the ready state, an element has allocated all of its global resources, that is, resources that can be kept within streams. You can think about opening devices, allocating buffers and so on. However, the stream is not opened in this state, so the stream positions is automatically zero. If a stream was previously opened, it should be closed in this state, and position, properties and such should be reset.

• GST_STATE_PAUSED: in this state, an element has opened the stream, but is not actively processing it. An element is allowed to modify a stream's position, read and process data and such to prepare for playback as soon as state is changed to PAUSED, but it is not allowed to play the data which would make the clock run. In summary, PAUSED is the same as PLAYING but without a running clock.

  Elements going into the PAUSED state should prepare themselves for moving over to the PLAYING state as soon as possible. Video or audio outputs would, for example, wait for data to arrive and queue it so they can play it right after the state change. Also, video sinks can already play the first frame (since this does not affect the clock yet). Autopluggers could use this same state transition to already plug together a pipeline. Most other elements, such as codecs or filters, do not need to explicitly do anything in this state, however.

• GST_STATE_PLAYING: in the PLAYING state, an element does exactly the same as in the PAUSED state, except that the clock now runs.

When you set a bin or pipeline to a certain target state, it will usually propagate the state change to all elements within the bin or pipeline automatically, so it's usually only necessary to set the state of the top-level pipeline to start up the pipeline or shut it down. However, when adding elements dynamically to an already-running pipeline, e.g. from within a "pad-added" signal callback, you need to set it to the desired target state yourself using gst_element_set_state () or gst_element_sync_state_with_parent ().