GstShark - Pipeline Diagram

GstShark
Getting Started
Getting the code Dependencies Building tracers Eclipse Plugin
Generating trace files
Tracer Parameters
Available Tracers
InterLatency Processing time Frame rate Schedule time CPU usage Graphic Bitrate Queue Level Buffer
Results
Common Trace Format Pipeline Diagram
Visualization Tools
gstshark-plot Eclipse plugin
Examples
CPU usage analysis Frame rate example Processing time example Scheduling time example Interlatency example
Contact Us

The GstShark graphic tracer triggers a local window to open using the Graphviz libraries. It also saves the diagram in the directed-graph dot format.

Using the local window

A local window is generated using the Graphviz libraries showing the diagram of the current pipeline. This diagram window lives during the lifetime of the pipeline and will be closed once the pipeline finishes or it is ended by the user. Likewise, closing the diagram window will terminate the pipeline.

The local window allows some navigation inside the image, but with some limitations. It is possible to use the mouse scroll-wheel to zoom in and out of the image.

Using the Eclipse Plugin

The experimental GstShark Eclipse plugin has limited support for opening the DOT files generated by GstShark. For more information about the Eclipse plugin, refer to the Eclipse Plugin usage page.

Using an external viewer

dot file viewers are available for many platforms. A comprehensive list is provided in Graphviz's website.

For Ubuntu and Debian systems, the Python-based xdot utility is available from the repositories and can be easily installed.

$ sudo apt install xdot

Converting to a different format

dot files can be converted to a different format easily by using graphviz's command-line dot utility.

~/gstshark_2017-08-16_17:20:22/graphic$ ls
pipeline.dot
~/gstshark_2017-08-16_17:20:22/graphic$ dot -Tpdf pipeline.dot-o pipeline.pdf
~/gstshark_2017-08-16_17:20:22/graphic$ ls
pipeline.dot  pipeline.pdf

Where -Tpdf selects the PDF output format. Multiple output formats are valid, including -Tpng for Portable-Network Graphics, -Tgtk for a GTK window viewer and -Tjpeg for JPEG graphics. A full list of the supported output formats is available in Graphviz's website.