Cannot Import GST in Python

Question

I'm in a quandary. I'm following the following tutorial (specifically, 6.4.2)

http://majorsilence.com/pygtk_audio_and_video_playback_gstreamer

I'm running Python 2.7, PyGTK 2.24, and GStreamer WinBuilds 10.7 (the main installer and the SDK).

When I try and compile the program, I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in import gst File "C:\Program Files\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.6\lib\site-packages\gst-0.10\gst__init__.py", line 193, in from _gst import * ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

How do I get the gst module to import? (Mind you, I checked, and pygst DOES import.)

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

This is because you are using Python 2.7, and the GST default is 2.6. This is really easy to fix:

Go to C:\Program Files\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.6\sdk\bindings\python\v2.7\lib

and copy

gstreamer-0.10 and site-packages to

C:\Program Files\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.6\lib, replacing any existing files.

Then delete the file C:\Program Files\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.6\lib\gstreamer-0.10\libgstpython-v2.6.dll (or change the extension to .dllx or something).

Now it should work.

Alternatively to changing GST to suit Python 2.7, you could just use Python 2.6.

EDIT: After attempting to install Gstreamer on a new computer, I found that I could not import pygst until I removed the extra backslash from C:\Program Files\OSSBuild\Gstreamer\v0.10.7\lib\site-packages\ in PYTHONPATH. I believe this may have been your problem all the way along.

Answer 2

I had the same problem on Windows 7 with Python 2.7, but the posted solution didn't work. It turned out there was something fishy going on with my path variables, I still don't know why. Here's how I fixed it:

• I created a file pygst.pth in the Python27 site-packages
• I copied the path from my environment variables PYTHONPATH, which was C:\Program Files (x86)\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.7\lib\site-packages\ on my computer, into the file pygst.pth

It was then able to import using the standard method after reopening the interpreter.

Answer 3

In my case the answer was to add the location of the gstreamer binaries to my PATH and my PYTHONPATH (not sure if the second is required)

C:\Program Files (x86)\OSSBuild\GStreamer\v0.10.7\bin

is the location on my machine.

Answer 4

Sometime there are other version of same dll in your system with cause the problem. To find out which dll causing the problem, you write a simple python script, loading the dll or pyd file. When execute with python.exe, it will show you a dialog box with much better error message then the "ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found."

Here is the python script.

import ctypes
ctypes.CDLL("C:\gstreamer-sdk\0.10\x86\lib\python2.7\site-packages\gst-0.10\gst\_gst.pyd")