GStreamer spring hackfest 2026

The GStreamer spring hackfest 2026 is an event where the GStreamer community gathers to meet in person and work on GStreamer-related topics. It is a great opportunity to spend a few days face-to-face with the people you usually talk to all year through merge requests, and to enjoy quality time together around code, food, and drinks. This year, Nice once again welcomed us with excellent weather and spectacular views of the Mediterranean Sea from the French Riviera.

Fluendo was represented this year by Pablo García and Fabián Orccón. During the three days of the event, they focused on two different areas: extending GStreamer support for Dolby audio technologies and improving the gst.wasm samples website. Here is a summary of the work done.

Pablo García focused on upstreaming support for Dolby audio technologies in GStreamer. The first part of the work during the hackfest was revisiting and refreshing a set of earlier merge requests so they were ready for review again. These updates covered different pieces required for broader Dolby support and helped keep the work aligned with the current upstream code base:

• mp4mux: Add basic support for AC-4
• qtdemux, tsdemux: Fix different seqnum errors
• qtdemux, tsdemux: Add ‘stream-format’ field for AC-4 caps

He also prepared a new merge request to add support for Dolby E in mpegtsdemux and isomp4.

As feedback on those changes was still limited, Pablo devoted most of his effort to a new building block that is needed to continue improving Dolby support in GStreamer: a SMPTE ST 337 depayloader. This work was sent upstream as: st337depay: new SMPTE ST 337 depayloader creation

Fabián Orccón focused on improving the gst.wasm samples website. The existing examples had grown with different integration approaches and an inconsistent visual design, so during the hackfest, he worked on consolidating them into a more coherent and maintainable website built with Vite and React.

This included restructuring the site, improving the presentation of the samples, and refining the overall user experience. He also added a few practical usability improvements for the examples themselves, although one known issue remains: when switching from one example to another, the previous sample can sometimes continue playing audio in the background. This is already fixed for pipelines based on core elements, but it still needs more work for pipelines using gst-plugins-web elements. This work is stored temporarily in the web branch of gst.wasm

Once again, the GStreamer spring hackfest proved to be a valuable opportunity to advance ongoing work, connect with the community, and exchange ideas in person. We look forward to seeing the impact of these contributions as they make their way upstream.

The next major GStreamer community gathering will be the annual GStreamer Conference, expected to take place in the last quarter of 2026. We hope to see you there!

Happy coding!