Chapter 14. Clocking

When playing complex media, each sound and video sample must be played in a specific order at a specific time. For this purpose, GStreamer provides a synchronization mechanism.

14.1. Types of time

There are two kinds of time in GStreamer. Clock time is an absolute time. By contrast, element time is the relative time, usually to the start of the current media stream. The element time represents the time that should have a media sample that is being processed by the element at this time. The element time is calculated by adding an offset to the clock time.