Yeah I couldn't find any documentation on it either, I only found out because I asked in #gstreamer when I needed to probe USB Devices.

"device" you can probe directly. However "device-name" can only be read when you load up an instance which is why I used a hack if you look at the Linux USB Probe code I did.

<pre>
videosrc = gst.element_factory_make("v4l2src", "videosrc")
devices = videosrc.probe_get_values_name('device')
videosrc.probe_property_name('device')

for device in devices:
    videosrc.set_property('device', device)
    devicemap[videosrc.get_property('device-name')] = device
</pre>

So I get a list of all devices found on that system. Then I used said list to loop and temporarily change the src to use said device. Then You can probe for the device-name using get_property().


Moral of the story... Sometimes it's worth asking on IRC or the Mailing list.