I was using the 0.2.0.6-1+b1 version from Debian. When trying to watch a video file, I was presented with the error message: "Could not initialise Xv output".
This is because I do not have a driver for it. xvinfo reports: "no adaptors present". Googling a little seems to suggest that I need the proprietary driver for my Nvidia card instead of the nouveau driver that I am currently using. That is not a feasible option for me. Instead I fetched the sources from git and changed parole to use autovideosink as shown in this diff, and now it works. May I suggest that parole be changed so that autovideosink is provided as a fallback for those who do not have the xv driver?

Or is there a better option?

Thanks,

Morten

--- gst/parole-gst.c.org        2011-10-28 14:44:37.000000000 +0200
+++ gst/parole-gst.c    2011-10-28 14:45:19.000000000 +0200
@@ -1720,7 +1720,7 @@
     
     if (enable_xv)
     {
-       gst->priv->video_sink = gst_element_factory_make ("xvimagesink", "video");
+       gst->priv->video_sink = gst_element_factory_make ("autovideosink", "video");
        gst->priv->xvimage_sink = TRUE;
     }
     
@@ -1728,7 +1728,7 @@
     {
        gst->priv->xvimage_sink = FALSE;
        g_debug ("%s trying to load ximagesink", enable_xv ? "xvimagesink not found " : "xv disabled "); 
-       gst->priv->video_sink = gst_element_factory_make ("ximagesink", "video");
+       gst->priv->video_sink = gst_element_factory_make ("autovideosink", "video");
        
        if ( G_UNLIKELY (gst->priv->video_sink == NULL) )