Trouble removing a sink from a playing pipeline

[Tal Liron]

On 01/-10/-28163 01:59 PM, Stefan Sauer wrote:
> On 10/02/2011 02:15 AM, Tal Liron wrote:
>> In order to entirely remove the branch, I have to set its state to
>> NULL. But, when the sink specifically changes to NULL, the pipeline
>> stops playing! It is still in PLAYING state, but it just stops at the
>> timeline.
> When you do dynamic pipieline changes all you need to keep in mind is
> that gstreamer does not like dataflow on unconnected pads. Thus if your
> pipeline pushes data towards the sink, you want to do a pad_block on the
> src-pad of the tee (for the branch you want to remove). When the block
> callback got triggered remove the elements and release the pad.
Thanks for the help -- the problem is not data flow, however, but state. 
In order to remove the elements, I need to set state to NULL, but if I 
do that the rest of the pipeline is affected.

Is there a way to either force removal of elements, or perhaps to change 
their state to NULL without affecting the pipeline?