[gst-devel] Timestamping and clocking compared to DirectShow

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi Tim,

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005, Tim Harris wrote:
> The documentation around clocking isn't very clear. Does the GStreamer
> core pick one global clock which is accessed by all of the elements, or
> do the elements only ever access the element time through Gstreamer and
> use their own global clock? What is the timebase of the global/element
> clocks and the timestamps?

The elements use the clock provided to them by the containing pipeline.
This clock is shared by all elements in the pipeline. In common playback
pipelines, the audiosink is usually clock provider. The time of buffers
usually starts at zero, although this may not be the case for live streams
(such as internet radio) such as WMA radio. The timebase for elements is
the difference between media time (buffer timestamps) and clock time
(absolute values).

HTH,
Ronald