After installation of GStreamer SDK packages (both runtime and development) on Windows (http://docs.gstreamer.com/display/GstSDK/Installing+on+Windows) system variable GST_PLUGIN_SYSTEM_PATH isn't set, so GStreamer-apps can't find all the plugins. Setting the variable manually fixes the problem.
This is intentional, but probably not well documented. We don't set this environment variable for the same reason we don't add GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_X86/bin the PATH variable: we think it's a bad practice as several installations can clash. On Windows, the default search path for plugins is relative to the location of libgstreamer-0.10.dll. Hence, if you load /c/gstreamer-sdk/0.10/x86/libgstreamer-0.10.dll, the plugins' search path will be set at /c/gstreamer-sdk/0.10/x86/lib/gstreamer-0.10 so you won't need this variable. Instead, if you decide to distribute your application with a private copy of the SDK and you don't use the default tree structure, than you should set this variables manually before calling gst_init from your application
Andoni, thanks for detailed arguments, they look quite reasonable. But yes, perhaps it needs a little more user attention in documentation. Although these installers are oriented on developer and not end user, still it can save much time if there're some instructions on necessary settings e.g. on the very last page of installer. Finally let me thank your team for this great set of Windows installers. Apart from these minor issues everything works smoothly and saves a lot of time. Thank you very much!
Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.