To show captions from an external SRT file over video in GStreamer, connect the decoded video to textoverlay.video_sink and parse the SRT with subparse into textoverlay.text_sink. The command below plays video with visible captions; it does not create a permanently captioned output file. YouTube playlist retrieval is a separate step: the official GStreamer references cited here do not verify direct YouTube watch-URL or playlist support.
Play a video with SRT captions overlaid
Use this documented gst-launch-1.0 pipeline, replacing the example filenames with your own:
gst-launch-1.0 textoverlay name=overlay ! videoconvert ! videoscale ! autovideosink
filesrc location=movie.avi ! decodebin3 ! videoconvert ! overlay.video_sink
filesrc location=movie.srt ! subparse ! overlay.text_sinkGStreamer’s gst-launch documentation demonstrates named-pad linking for this arrangement. decodebin3 decodes the video; subparse parses the SRT cues; and textoverlay renders the cue text over the video. The overlay matches subtitle and video timestamps to determine when captions appear. The final conversion, scaling, and sink elements send the result to a local video output. See the textoverlay documentation for its behavior and properties.
Element and codec availability depends on your GStreamer installation. If the command reports a missing element or cannot decode the file, check which plugins and decoders are installed for your version before changing the graph.
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What this pipeline does—and does not do
It displays captions during playback
The SRT is an external, timestamped input. subparse sends its cues to the overlay’s text pad, while decoded video goes to its video pad. textoverlay combines them for display. Its text can also be set statically with the text property when the text sink is not connected; for SRT captions, connect the parsed text stream instead.
It does not save a captioned video
The example ends at autovideosink, so it plays the composited result rather than writing a new file. If you need captions permanently rendered into a video, the pipeline must continue through a video encoder, a container muxer, and an output sink. The cited subtitle example does not specify those encoding and container choices; select and verify them for your intended format and GStreamer installation.
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Use playbin3 for a simpler playback setup
If you do not need to wire the overlay pads yourself, GStreamer documents playbin3 with a media uri and an external subtitle suburi. This lets the player manage subtitle playback and is a simpler alternative when its default behavior is suitable. It is not a YouTube playlist recipe. See the playbin documentation.
Handle YouTube playlist entries separately
The reviewed GStreamer references cover generic URI playback and network streaming, but do not document resolving YouTube watch URLs, extracting YouTube playlist entries, or advancing directly through a YouTube playlist. Do not assume that passing a YouTube playlist URL as uri will work.
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For a playlist workflow, treat YouTube retrieval and iteration as an upstream concern: resolve each playlist entry to a media URI GStreamer can read, then provide those entries to the playback or processing pipeline. The resolver, access conditions, and current compatibility with YouTube are not established by the cited GStreamer documentation. Verify the approach in your environment rather than treating it as a supported GStreamer feature.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Check timing, encoding, and buffering
Subtitle timing
Because textoverlay matches the timestamps of the video and text streams, captions depend on the SRT cue times aligning with the video timeline. If captions appear at the wrong point, check the SRT timestamps and whether the video has an offset before changing the pipeline.
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Character encoding and overlay controls
For a player-managed subtitle path, GStreamer’s subtitleoverlay documentation lists controls including font-desc, subtitle-encoding, subtitle-ts-offset, and silent. The documented offset is in nanoseconds and defaults to zero. If no subtitle encoding is set, the documented fallback is GST_SUBTITLE_ENCODING, then ISO-8859-15. These controls belong to subtitleoverlay; do not assume they are all properties of the explicit textoverlay graph.
Network buffering in an application
For network playback managed through playbin, the documentation describes buffering messages: keep or set the pipeline to PAUSED while buffering is below 100%, then return it to PLAYING at 100% if playback is desired. This is application-level handling, not an instruction to paste into the gst-launch-1.0 example.
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