GStreamer has an extensive set of debugging tools for plugin developers.
Applications using the GStreamer libraries accept the following set of command line argruments that help in debugging.
--gst-debug-help Print available debug categories and exit
--gst-debug-level=LEVEL Sets the default debug level from 0 (no output) to 5 (everything)
--gst-debug=LIST Comma-separated list of category_name:level pairs to set specific levels for the individual categories. Example: GST_AUTOPLUG:5,GST_ELEMENT_*:3
--gst-debug-no-color Disable color debugging output
--gst-debug-disable Disable debugging
--gst-plugin-spew Enable printout of errors while loading GStreamer plugins.