The problem is only present when using GStreamer command line tools. C programs that contain "autovideosink" compile and run as expected.
gst-inspect-1.0 autovideosink
returns
No such element or plugin 'autovideosink'
and
gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! autovideosink
returns
WARNING: erroneous pipeline: no element "autovideosink"
I am running Debian 9.4. I installed gstreamer with the following command:
sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-0 gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-doc gstreamer1.0-tools