Download GStreamer

The latest stable release is 1.28.2. Installers are available for the following targets:

• MSVC x86_64 (VS 2022, Release CRT)
• MSVC x86 (VS 2022, Release CRT)
• MSVC arm64 (VS 2022, Release CRT)
• MinGW x86_64
• MinGW x86

If you are not sure which to pick between MSVC and MinGW, just pick MSVC. However, do see the toolchain compatibility notes below which may affect you based on what toolchain your app will be built with.

Python wheels are also available via PyPI, starting with 1.28.0. Simply run:

pip install gstreamer-bundle

NOTE: The libraries built with MSVC are named differently from MinGW; specifically the DLLs are of the form foo.dll instead of libfoo.dll.

NOTE: GstSharp .NET bindings require the MSVC binaries starting with 1.18.

Older 1.x binary releases are also available. Older installers are split into runtime and development packages, so for app development, you will want to install both packages.

Universal Windows Platform

Binary releases built to target the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Used for shipping apps on the Windows Store, such as for an Xbox, HoloLens 2, etc.

• UWP Universal (ARM64, X86, X86_64) (VS 2019, Release CRT) (ancient stable)
  • 1.20.7 runtime + development tarball
• UWP Universal (ARM64, X86, X86_64) (VS 2019, Debug CRT) (ancient stable)
  • 1.20.7 runtime + development tarball

UWP apps cannot use plugins that use dependencies built with MinGW because of forbidden APIs. Hence, these plugins are omitted from the binaries.

UWP has been abandoned by Microsoft, and as such is no longer supported by the GStreamer project. This section will be removed in the future.

Toolchain Compatibility Notes

On Windows, you can use a number of different toolchains and versions thereof, and it is not always obvious how these can be mixed and matched with the binaries provided above by GStreamer.

The first step is ensuring that you're using the correct architecture. You should not try to mix 32-bit code built with any toolchain with 64-bit code built with any toolchain.

Next, understand that since GStreamer is written mostly in C, all APIs exported by GStreamer libraries and plugins use C ABIs. Even plugins written in other languages such as Rust, C++, C#, Python, etc, are loaded using the C ABI.

This means you can consume the GStreamer binaries from any toolchain that uses the same C ABI. Using the same CRT (C Runtime) is better, but it's not always a requirement. Here's the matrix outlining the CRT used for each GStreamer version:

GStreamer version	MinGW	MSVC
1.18+	ucrtbase.dll	ucrtbase.dll
1.16	msvcrt.dll	ucrtbase.dll
1.14	msvcrt.dll	N/A

This is the toolchain compatibility matrix with the stable releases:

App Toolchain	1.16 MinGW	1.16 MSVC	1.18+ MinGW	1.18+ MSVC
Visual Studio 2015 and newer (ucrtbase.dll)	PARTIAL	FULL	FULL	FULL
Visual Studio 2013 and older (msvcrt.dll)	PARTIAL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL
MinGW (msvcrt.dll)	FULL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL
MinGW-w64 (msvcrt.dll)	FULL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL
MSYS2 MinGW-w64 (msvcrt.dll)	FULL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL	PARTIAL
Cygwin	NONE	NONE	NONE	NONE

FULL means full C compatibility, including debugging symbols.

PARTIAL means mixing the two should be fine as long as you are careful while passing memory across CRT boundaries.

NONE means fully unsupported, and will lead to crashes.