a couple of questions getting started with gstreamer development

[David Röthlisberger]

On 5 Jul 2012, at 23:07, Chuck Crisler wrote:
> gst-launch -v videotestsrc pattern=snow ! xvimagesink
> 
> ERROR: from element /pipeline0/xvimagesink0: Could not initialize Xv output
> ...
> xvimagesink.c(1342): gst_xvimagesink_get_xv_support (): /pipeline0/xvimagesink0: No port available

It seems you don't have XVideo† support. Are you running this command over a remote terminal with X11 forwarding?

Try using ximagesink instead of xvimagesink.

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_video_extension

> where is the source for these plugins so I can look it up in the future?

See http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/modules/
The rightmost column has links to web-browsable git repos for each module.
Find out which module your element belongs to with `gst-inspect` (e.g. gst-inspect xvimagesink).

--Dave.