GStreamer is an extremely powerful and versatile framework for creating streaming media applications. Many of the virtues of the GStreamer framework come from its modularity: GStreamer can seamlessly incorporate new plugin modules. But because modularity and power often come at a cost of greater complexity, writing new applications is not always easy. This guide is intended to help you understand the GStreamer framework version 1.8.3) so you can develop applications based on it. The first chapters will focus on development of a simple audio player, with much effort going into helping you understand GStreamer concepts. Later chapters will go into more advanced topics related to media playback, but also at other forms of media processing (capture, editing, etc.).