PipeWire’s pipeline operation vs GStreamer’s explained

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In GStreamer, the media pipeline operation is defined by threads that are continuously pushing or pulling data through the pads of the linked elements. This is an elegant and very flexible way of operating the pipeline, but there are certain drawbacks. PipeWire follows a different approach, using a single thread that wakes up elements in a dependency-based sequence to consume and produce data that is placed in shared memory. With that approach, it can schedule pipelines with a predictable processing latency that span across multiple processes, quite efficiently. How does that work exactly and are there drawbacks to that as well? This talk aims to explain in depth and discuss pipeline operation and how to get the most out of different systems.

Creation date: Oct. 24, 2025

Speakers: George Kiagiadakis

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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