GStreamer In-Band Metadata for MPEG Transport Stream/Getting Started/Building natively

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Overview

In order to compile the meta plugin and install it directly, we need to patch some GStreamer libraries, so we need to:

1. Get gst-metadata source code
2. Install needed dependencies
3. Download GStreamer, gst-plugins-base and gst-plugins-bad source code
4. Patch GStreamer and gst-plugins bad source code
5. Compile these three packages in order
6. Overwrite system packages (Not required: Backup the files in case something goes wrong)
7. Compile gst-metadata
8. Install gst-metadata

NOTE: This assumes you already have GStreamer installed, if this is not the case, please proceede to install it in your system first.

Installation guide

Before proceeding with each step, we are gonna need some general variables and steps to set up the building environment:

export BRANCH=$(gst-inspect-1.0 --version | awk 'NR==2 {print $2}')                                # This gets the version of GStreamer installed in the system
export BRANCH_PATCHES=$(echo $BRANCH | cut -d'.' -f 1-2)                                           # This gets only the Major and Minor from the GStreamer version, we will need it later
export LIBRARY_VERSION=$(echo $BRANCH | awk -F "." '{f=$2; l=$3} END{if(l < 10)l=0l; print f l}')  # This sets the Minor and Patch from the version in GStreamer as 1405 for example for version v1.14.5

Then we need to set the GStreamer installation path from your system, please check the table below to set it:

Table 1. GStreamer's installation path

Platform	Path
Ubuntu 64-bits	/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
RidgeRun's Embedded FS	-/usr
Jetson TX1 TX2 Xavier Nano	/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu

In the case of the Jetson boards, you need to do it as below:

export INSTALL_PATH=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu

Then we can set our environment, you can change to any folder where you will like to start building the packages, for example, you can switch to home, this guide builds them inside the gst-build folder:

cd ~
export BUILD_DIR=`pwd`/gst-build # We will build all the packages inside of this folder
mkdir -p $BUILD_DIR
mkdir -p $BUILD_DIR/prefix

Download gst-metadata

You can get the gst-metatada source code in place, for this you can clone the repo with the next commands, or you can move the folder.

cd $BUILD_DIR
YOUR_NAME=your_name # Change this with your name in the repo
REPO_URL=https://gitlab.com/RidgeRun/orders/$YOUR_NAME/gst-metadata
git clone $REPO_URL

Install needed dependencies

This is the list of dependencies required to compile GStreamer

sudo apt-get install \
pkg-config bison flex git \
libglib2.0-dev liborc-0.4-dev \
libtool autopoint autoconf \
gettext yasm build-essential \
autotools-dev dpkg-dev automake

You may also need the development version of different libraries:

sudo apt-get install \
liborc-dev autopoint gtk-doc-tools libgstreamer1.0-dev \
libxv-dev libasound2-dev libtheora-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev \
libbz2-dev libv4l-dev libvpx-dev libjack-jackd2-dev libsoup2.4-dev libpulse-dev \
faad libfaad-dev libfaac-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev \
libx264-dev libmad0-dev

Download GStreamer source code

To start the building process, we need the source code of gstreamer, gst-plugins-base and gst-plugins-bad, for this we can run the following lines in bash:

cd $BUILD_DIR
MODULES="gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-bad"
for m in $MODULES
do
    if [ ! -f "$m-$BRANCH.tar.xz" ]; then
        wget http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/$m/$m-$BRANCH.tar.xz
        tar -xf $m-$BRANCH.tar.xz
        mv $m-$BRANCH $m
    else 
        echo "$m-$BRANCH source found!"
    fi
done

This will download each package and decompress it, then changes each folder's name to remove the -$BRANCH from them.

Patch gstreamer and gst-plugins bad

The next step before compilation of GStreamer, is patching it, for this we should copy the patches and apply them in their respective package as follows:

echo "Patching GStreamer core"
# Copy GStreamer patch to gstreamer folder
cd $BUILD_DIR
cp gst-metadata/extras/gstreamer-$BRANCH_PATCHES.x/fix-sparse-flag-setting-up.patch gstreamer/
# Apply GStreamer patch
cd gstreamer
git apply fix-sparse-flag-setting-up.patch

echo "Patching GStreamer Plugins Bad core"
# Copy GStreamer plugins bad patches to gstreamer-plugins-bad folder
cd $BUILD_DIR
cp gst-metadata/extras/gstreamer-$BRANCH_PATCHES.x/mpegtsmux-reference-clock-on-waiting-pad.patch gst-plugins-bad/
cp gst-metadata/extras/gstreamer-$BRANCH_PATCHES.x/mpegtsmux-meta-specific-pad-templates.patch gst-plugins-bad/
cp gst-metadata/extras/gstreamer-$BRANCH_PATCHES.x/tsmux-demux-update-klv-support.patch gst-plugins-bad/
# Apply GStreamer plugins bad patches
cd gst-plugins-bad
git apply mpegtsmux-reference-clock-on-waiting-pad.patch
git apply mpegtsmux-meta-specific-pad-templates.patch
git apply tsmux-demux-update-klv-support.patch

Compiling GStreamer

To compile GStreamer, is enough to get inside each of the packages' folder and compile inside, just as below:

cd $BUILD_DIR
MODULES="gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-bad"
for m in $MODULES
do
    cd $m
    ./autogen.sh --disable-gtk-doc --disable-tests --disable-nls && make -j8
    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=`pwd`/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH
    cd ..
done

Overwrite GStreamer system packages

From the compilation stage, we need to copy some libraries into the system libraries, so for this is highly recommended to backup the original ones first just in case anything goes wrong:

sudo cp $INSTALL_PATH/libgstbase-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0 $INSTALL_PATH/libgstbase-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0.bk
sudo cp $INSTALL_PATH/libgstcodecparsers-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0 $INSTALL_PATH/libgstcodecparsers-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0.bk
sudo cp $INSTALL_PATH/libgstmpegts-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0 $INSTALL_PATH/libgstmpegts-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0.bk
sudo cp $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegpsdemux.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegpsdemux.so.bk
sudo cp $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegtsmux.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegtsmux.so.bk
sudo cp $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegtsdemux.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegtsdemux.so.bk

Then we can update them by installing the ones we just compiled:

cd $BUILD_DIR
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/gstreamer/libs/gst/base/.libs/libgstbase-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0 $INSTALL_PATH/libgstbase-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/gst-plugins-bad/gst-libs/gst/codecparsers/.libs/libgstcodecparsers-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0 $INSTALL_PATH/libgstcodecparsers-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/gst-plugins-bad/gst-libs/gst/mpegts/.libs/libgstmpegts-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0 $INSTALL_PATH/libgstmpegts-1.0.so.0.$LIBRARY_VERSION.0
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/gst-plugins-bad/gst/mpegdemux/.libs/libgstmpegpsdemux.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegpsdemux.so
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/gst-plugins-bad/gst/mpegtsmux/.libs/libgstmpegtsmux.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegtsmux.so
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/gst-plugins-bad/gst/mpegtsdemux/.libs/libgstmpegtsdemux.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmpegtsdemux.so

Compile gst-metadata

Now that we have GStreamer patched, the compilation of gst-metadata is our next step, for this execute the following lines:

cd $BUILD_DIR
cd gst-metadata/src
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix $BUILD_DIR/prefix/
make all
make install

Install gst-metadata

Finally, we can install gst-metadata by copying it:

cd $BUILD_DIR
sudo cp $BUILD_DIR/prefix/lib/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmeta.so $INSTALL_PATH/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmeta.so

Verify installation

At this point, it should be possible to inspect the meta element:

Expected output:

# Command
gst-inspect-1.0 meta

# Output: 
Plugin Details:
  Name                     meta
  Description              Elements used to send and receive metadata
  Filename                 /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstmeta.so
  Version                  1.6.3
  License                  Proprietary
  Source module            gst-plugin-meta
  Binary package           RidgeRun elements
  Origin URL               http://www.ridgerun.com

  metasrc: Metadata Source
  metasink: Metadata Sink
  misbparser: MISB Parser

  3 features:
  +-- 3 elements

The plugin is ready to be used, check the examples section to use the meta plugin.