qtmux: GStreamer Good Plugins 1.0 Plugins Reference Manual

## qtmux qtmux — Muxer for quicktime(.mov) files |

## Properties

GstQTMuxDtsMethods | dts-method | Read / Write / Construct
gboolean | faststart | Read / Write
gchar * | faststart-file | Read / Write / Construct
guint | fragment-duration | Read / Write / Construct
gchar * | moov-recovery-file | Read / Write / Construct
guint | movie-timescale | Read / Write / Construct
gboolean | presentation-time | Read / Write / Construct
gboolean | streamable | Read / Write / Construct
guint | trak-timescale | Read / Write / Construct
guint | reserved-bytes-per-sec | Read / Write / Construct
guint64 | reserved-duration-remaining | Read
guint64 | reserved-max-duration | Read / Write
guint64 | reserved-moov-update-period | Read / Write
guint64 | interleave-bytes | Read / Write
guint64 | interleave-time | Read / Write
guint64 | max-raw-audio-drift | Read / Write
gboolean | reserved-prefill | Read / Write / Construct

## Types and Values

struct | GstQTMux

## Object Hierarchy

        GObject
        ╰── GInitiallyUnowned
            ╰── GstObject
                ╰── GstElement
                    ╰── GstQTMux

## Implemented Interfaces

GstQTMux implements GstTagSetter, GstTagXmpWriter and GstPreset.

## Description

This element merges streams (audio and video) into QuickTime(.mov) files.

The following background intends to explain why various similar muxers are present in this plugin.

The QuickTime file format specification served as basis for the MP4 file format specification (mp4mux), and as such the QuickTime file structure is nearly identical to the so-called ISO Base Media file format defined in ISO 14496-12 (except for some media specific parts). In turn, the latter ISO Base Media format was further specialized as a Motion JPEG-2000 file format in ISO 15444-3 (mj2mux) and in various 3GPP(2) specs (gppmux). The fragmented file features defined (only) in ISO Base Media are used by ISMV files making up (a.o.) Smooth Streaming (ismlmux).

A few properties (“movie-timescale”, “trak-timescale”, “trak-timescale”) allow adjusting some technical parameters, which might be useful in (rare) cases to resolve compatibility issues in some situations.

Some other properties influence the result more fundamentally. A typical mov/mp4 file's metadata (aka moov) is located at the end of the file, somewhat contrary to this usually being called "the header". However, a “faststart” file will (with some effort) arrange this to be located near start of the file, which then allows it e.g. to be played while downloading. Alternatively, rather than having one chunk of metadata at start (or end), there can be some metadata at start and most of the other data can be spread out into fragments of “fragment-duration”. If such fragmented layout is intended for streaming purposes, then “streamable” allows foregoing to add index metadata (at the end of file).

When the maximum duration to be recorded can be known in advance, GstQTMux also supports a 'Robust Muxing' mode. In robust muxing mode, space for the headers are reserved at the start of muxing, and rewritten at a configurable interval, so that the output file is always playable, even if the recording is interrupted uncleanly by a crash. Robust muxing mode requires a seekable output, such as filesink, because it needs to rewrite the start of the file.

To enable robust muxing mode, set the “reserved-moov-update-period” and “reserved-max-duration” property. Also present is the “reserved-bytes-per-sec” property, which can be increased if for some reason the default is not large enough and the initial reserved space for headers is too small. Applications can monitor the “reserved-duration-remaining” property to see how close to full the reserved space is becoming.

Applications that wish to be able to use/edit a file while it is being written to by live content, can use the "Robust Prefill Muxing" mode. That mode is a variant of the "Robust Muxing" mode in that it will pre-allocate a completely valid header from the start for all tracks (i.e. it appears as though the file is "reserved-max-duration" long with all samples present). This mode can be enabled by setting the “reserved-moov-update-period” and “reserved-prefill” properties. Note that this mode is only possible with input streams that have a fixed sample size (such as raw audio and Prores Video) and that don't have reordered samples.

### Example pipelines

    1
    gst-launch-1.0 v4l2src num-buffers=500 ! video/x-raw,width=320,height=240 ! videoconvert ! qtmux ! filesink location=video.mov

Records a video stream captured from a v4l2 device and muxes it into a qt file.

## Synopsis

### Element Information

plugin | isomp4
author | Thiago Sousa Santos <thiagoss@embedded.ufcg.edu.br>
class | Codec/Muxer

### Element Pads

name | audio_%u
direction | sink
presence | request
details | audio/x-raw, format=(string){ S32LE, S32BE, S24LE, S24BE, S16LE, S16BE, S8, U8 }, layout=(string)interleaved, channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/x-raw, format=(string){ S32LE, S32BE, S24LE, S24BE, S16LE, S16BE, S8, U8 }, layout=(string)interleaved, channel-mask=(bitmask)0x0000000000000000, channels=(int)[ 1, 16 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)1, layer=(int)[ 1, 3 ], channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, stream-format=(string)raw, channels=(int)[ 1, 8 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/x-ac3, channels=(int)[ 1, 6 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/x-adpcm, layout=(string)dvi, block_align=(int)[ 64, 8096 ], channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/x-alaw, channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/x-mulaw, channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/AMR, rate=(int)8000, channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ]
| audio/AMR-WB, rate=(int)16000, channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ]
| audio/x-alac, channels=(int)[ 1, 2 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]
| audio/x-opus, channel-mapping-family=(int)[ 0, 255 ], channels=(int)[ 1, 8 ], rate=(int)[ 1, 2147483647 ]

name | subtitle_%u
direction | sink
presence | request
details | text/x-raw, format=(string)utf8

name | video_%u
direction | sink
presence | request
details | video/x-raw, format=(string){ RGB, UYVY, v210 }, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, systemstream=(boolean)false, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-divx, divxversion=(int)5, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-prores, variant=(string){ standard, lt, hq, proxy, 4444, 4444xq }, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-cineform, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-h263, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-h264, stream-format=(string)avc, alignment=(string)au, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-h265, stream-format=(string){ hvc1, hev1 }, alignment=(string)au, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-svq, svqversion=(int)3, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-dv, systemstream=(boolean)false, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| image/jpeg, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| image/png, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-vp8, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-vp9, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-dirac, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]
| video/x-qt-part, width=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ], height=(int)[ 16, 2147483647 ]

name | src
direction | source
presence | always
details | video/quicktime, variant=(string)apple
| video/quicktime

## Functions

## Types and Values

### struct GstQTMux

    struct GstQTMux;

## Property Details

### The `“dts-method”` property

      “dts-method”               GstQTMuxDtsMethods

Method to determine DTS time (DEPRECATED).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: reorder

### The `“faststart”` property

      “faststart”                gboolean

If the file should be formatted for faststart (headers first).

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: FALSE

### The `“faststart-file”` property

      “faststart-file”           gchar *

File that will be used temporarily to store data from the stream when creating a faststart file. If null a filepath will be created automatically.

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: NULL

### The `“fragment-duration”` property

      “fragment-duration”        guint

Fragment durations in ms (produce a fragmented file if > 0).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: 0

### The `“moov-recovery-file”` property

      “moov-recovery-file”       gchar *

File to be used to store data for moov atom making movie file recovery possible in case of a crash during muxing. Null for disabled. (Experimental).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: NULL

### The `“movie-timescale”` property

      “movie-timescale”          guint

Timescale to use in the movie (units per second, 0 == default).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: 0

### The `“presentation-time”` property

      “presentation-time”        gboolean

Calculate and include presentation/composition time (in addition to decoding time).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: TRUE

### The `“streamable”` property

      “streamable”               gboolean

If set to true, the output should be as if it is to be streamed and hence no indexes written or duration written. (DEPRECATED, only valid for fragmented MP4).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: FALSE

### The `“trak-timescale”` property

      “trak-timescale”           guint

Timescale to use for the tracks (units per second, 0 is automatic).

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: 0

### The `“reserved-bytes-per-sec”` property

      “reserved-bytes-per-sec”   guint

Multiplier for converting reserved-max-duration into bytes of header to reserve, per second, per track.

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Allowed values: <= 10000

Default value: 550

### The `“reserved-duration-remaining”` property

      “reserved-duration-remaining” guint64

Reports the approximate amount of remaining moov header space reserved using reserved-max-duration.

Flags: Read

Default value: 0

### The `“reserved-max-duration”` property

      “reserved-max-duration”    guint64

When set to a value > 0, reserves space for index tables at the beginning of the file.

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: 18446744073709551615

### The `“reserved-moov-update-period”` property

      “reserved-moov-update-period” guint64

When used with reserved-max-duration, periodically updates the index tables with information muxed so far.

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: 18446744073709551615

### The `“interleave-bytes”` property

      “interleave-bytes”         guint64

Interleave between streams in bytes.

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: 0

### The `“interleave-time”` property

      “interleave-time”          guint64

Interleave between streams in nanoseconds.

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: 250000000

### The `“max-raw-audio-drift”` property

      “max-raw-audio-drift”      guint64

Maximum allowed drift of raw audio samples vs. timestamps in nanoseconds.

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: 40000000

### The `“reserved-prefill”` property

      “reserved-prefill”         gboolean

Prefill samples table of reserved duration.

Flags: Read / Write / Construct

Default value: FALSE