When you are using gstreamer or ``gst-launch`` to run some tasks, you can use the ``progressreport`` element to get gstreamer to regularly print out how much it has done, and how much to go. If you are playing a video you can use this pipeline: gst-launch filesrc location=video.mov ! decodebin ! progressreport ! autovideosink You will then see on your terminal regular lines printed (default is to print every 5 seconds). It'll look like this: progressreport0 (00:00:05): 4 / 188 seconds ( 2.1 %) As you can see after 5 seconds (``00:00:05``), it has processed 4 (ish) of 188 seconds (``4 / 188 seconds``) of the file, which is 2.1% of the total. There is obviously some slight rounding here, but it gives you an idea.