<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.12.1"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Sun, 2006-11-26 at 02:22 +0100, René Stadler wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> The element is indeed not documented. Parsing the message like this should work (completely untested): { const GstStructure *s = gst_message_get_structure (message); const gchar *name = gst_structure_get_name (s); if (g_str_equal (name, "cutter")) { gboolean above; GstClockTime timestamp; if (gst_structure_get_boolean (s, "above", &above) && gst_structure_get_clock_time (s, "timestamp", &timestamp)) { do_something (above, timestamp); } } } Where "message" is a GstMessage of type GST_MESSAGE_ELEMENT coming from the bus. Your application should already interact with the pipeline's bus to implement error handling. Refer to the application development manual and the core reference for more information. Regards, René Stadler </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> That was the ticket!  I now have a single file that grows when there is sound above the threshold I specify (0.01 (-40dB) seems good right now). On to other aspects of the application. Thanks for the help, John </BODY> </HTML>