the second check (if (input)) is always true if the v4l element is created, so
an sdlvideosink should be created, but the logic isnt set that way, so if a
valid v4lsrc is created, no ouptut is created and the program doesn't do anything.

At least, that's how i read it...

In any case, nothing gets outputted unless i comment out the second input check
on lines 490-492

This is on a Fedora core 3 machine with the gstreamer rpm packages from
gstreamer.org (0.8.8)

Thank you for taking the effort to create sample programs.  I am very bad at
learning to program in new API's (to me) without them.