10.4. The PAUSED state

A pipeline that is playing can be set to the PAUSED state. This will temporarily stop all data flowing through the pipeline.

You can resume the data flow by setting the pipeline back to the PLAYING state.

Note

The PAUSED state is available for temporarily freezing the pipeline. Elements will typically not free their resources in the PAUSED state. Use the NULL state if you want to stop the data flow permanently.

The pipeline has to be in the PAUSED or NULL state if you want to insert or modify an element in the pipeline. We will cover dynamic pipeline behaviour in Chapter 26.