[2.0RC1] Font cache constantly being rebuilt

[Cortig]

Hi All,

I’m experiencing a problem very similar to what has been reported for the Windows version (http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3950). In essence, every time I launch VLC 2.0RC1, I get a warning telling me the font cache is being rebuilt.

My user account is not in /Users (it’s on another volume, properly specified in the Advanced User System preferences and doubled-up with a symlink in /Users (just in case). With most apps, this works beautifully, but I’m wondering whether VLC could be affected here and having issues attempting to use Absolute paths instead of relative ones (/Users/<me> instead of ~/).

Anybody seeing anything similar? The fact that I don’t see other threads on the same topic in the forum might indicate it’s not a generalized issue, but I was curious…

Corentin

MacBook Pro, 2.66GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, MacOS X 10.7.3

[Cortig]

To clarify one thing: it’s not rebuild when I launch the application, but it is when I attempt to open a movie (that doesn’t even have subtitles) with it.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Can you share the log?

[Cortig]

Can you share the log?

I would love to, but I'm not sure where to find it.
I looked in ~/Application Support/org.videlan.vlc and in ~/Logs and didn't find it. Could you give me a pointer?

Thanks

Corentin

[ovvldc]

You can have my log: http://pastebin.com/RQyBLpmy

I also found the following in my console.log:
13-02-12 23:06:55 [0x0-0x1ed1ed].org.videolan.vlc[8505] [0x100284750] main xml reader error: XML reader not found
13-02-12 23:06:55 [0x0-0x1ed1ed].org.videolan.vlc[8505] [0x100202b70] main libvlc: Start vlc met standaardinterface. Gebruik 'cvlc' om vlc zonder interface te gebruiken.
13-02-12 23:07:02 [0x0-0x1ed1ed].org.videolan.vlc[8505] Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
13-02-12 23:07:43 [0x0-0x1ed1ed].org.videolan.vlc[8505] Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
13-02-12 23:08:37 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[258] ([0x0-0x1ed1ed].org.videolan.vlc[8505]) Exited: Terminated

The one line that stands out:
freetype debug: Building font databases.

So Freetype has a problem. And since the CoreText subtitle systems doesn't work (see my other post on this), we are running out of options..

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

this xml issue was fixed after the RC1

[Cortig]

Great!! Thnaks for letting us know Jean-Baptiste!

Corentin

[nkoriyama]

Font cache is generated only when you add a new font to the system, and it's stored to ~/Library/Caches/fontconfig.
You can check the cache files' time stamp.

A dialog appears and disappears instantly if you don't add any fonts or don't delete font caches.

[Cortig]

Font cache is generated only when you add a new font to the system, and it's stored to ~/Library/Caches/fontconfig.
You can check the cache files' time stamp.

Well I sure haven't been adding fonts or installing any application that does. That's why I suspected there was something wrong with the VLC font cache.

A dialog appears and disappears instantly if you don't add any fonts or don't delete font caches.

That's my problem: The mesasge stays up far more than otherwise expected. It sometimes even takes a little while, but the duration isn't consistant.

Corentin

[Cortig]

Font cache is generated only when you add a new font to the system, and it's stored to ~/Library/Caches/fontconfig.
You can check the cache files' time stamp.

And I forgot to mention: the folder seems to be updated all the time. The timestamp reveals it was last updated the last time I played a video in VLC.

Corentin

[nkoriyama]

We can disappear the dialog.
But if the dialog doesn't appear, when user add a lot of fonts or delete the caches, VLC seem locks up without warning.
We can't estimate if the font cache will be regenerated or not, so we show this dialog every time.

[nkoriyama]

And I forgot to mention: the folder seems to be updated all the time. The timestamp reveals it was last updated the last time I played a video in VLC.

Really? Can you check the timestamps on the terminal like "ls -l ~/Library/Cache/org.videolan.vlc/" ?
On my system, timestamps were updated only when I added or modified the fonts.

Code: Select all

anne:codec nkoriyama$ ls -lrt ~/Library/Caches/fontconfig/ total 2152 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 217792 11 12 09:47 b0a71e6bf6a8a1a908413a823d76e21f-x86_64.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 568096 11 12 09:57 84c0f976e30e948e99073af70f4ae876-x86_64.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 3712 11 12 09:57 0d0b701a8a47f5e73b8c09017383460c-x86_64.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 157904 11 29 14:44 b0a71e6bf6a8a1a908413a823d76e21f-le32d4.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 2424 11 29 14:44 0d0b701a8a47f5e73b8c09017383460c-le32d4.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 423616 12 11 20:58 84c0f976e30e948e99073af70f4ae876-le32d4.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 567976 2 2 11:43 84c0f976e30e948e99073af70f4ae876-le64.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 217872 2 2 11:43 b0a71e6bf6a8a1a908413a823d76e21f-le64.cache-3 -rw-r--r-- 1 nkoriyama staff 27552 2 2 12:42 0d0b701a8a47f5e73b8c09017383460c-le64.cache-3

[Cortig]

Interesting…
Just for the heck of it, I deleted the ~/Library/Caches/fontconfig folder and relaunched VLC. The font cache was rebuilt and since then the application has been fine.
I can not relaunch VLC and play a new video and the FOnt cache dialog barely flashes now!
Tremendous improvement.
I suspect something was awfully wrong with my fontconfig folder.
I might never know what it was but in any case I'm glad it's gone.

Corentin

[Cortig]

I'm fine with the warning appearing the way it does now (see my other post).
It sure wasn't like that before I deleted the fontcongif folder. The application was stuck for 20-30s at the time whenever I was attempting to play a movie.

Corentin

[nkoriyama]

I'm glad to hear it

[kdean]

We can disappear the dialog.
But if the dialog doesn't appear, when user add a lot of fonts or delete the caches, VLC seem locks up without warning.
We can't estimate if the font cache will be regenerated or not, so we show this dialog every time.

Instead of flashing the dialog everytime which is kind of annoying and may make people think something important is flashing by, is it possible to put a slight delay on the appearance of the dialog so that the instances where it would normally flash doesn't cause the dialog to appear, yet longer actual font cache rebuilds are the only things that actually trigger the appearance of the dialog. It'd be a much cleaner experience at that point.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

We can disappear the dialog.
But if the dialog doesn't appear, when user add a lot of fonts or delete the caches, VLC seem locks up without warning.
We can't estimate if the font cache will be regenerated or not, so we show this dialog every time.

Instead of flashing the dialog everytime which is kind of annoying and may make people think something important is flashing by, is it possible to put a slight delay on the appearance of the dialog so that the instances where it would normally flash doesn't cause the dialog to appear, yet longer actual font cache rebuilds are the only things that actually trigger the appearance of the dialog. It'd be a much cleaner experience at that point.

Yes, that is waht we do on win32

[ovvldc]

Not to rain on the parade, but clearing the fontconfig folder doesn't work for me in 17 Feb nightly. In fact, if I hit 'play' it will simply restart the process. Are there any plan of actually fixing the Freetype or CoreText subtitle renderers?

[nkoriyama]

Not to rain on the parade, but clearing the fontconfig folder doesn't work for me in 17 Feb nightly. In fact, if I hit 'play' it will simply restart the process. Are there any plan of actually fixing the Freetype or CoreText subtitle renderers?

What's your problem?

We only plan to fix the problem that the dialog appears when font cache is not generated.
If it is fixed, the dialog will appear only when generating font cache.

[ovvldc]

What I seem to have got was a brief flash of a dialog and disc trashing and generating of a new font cache..

[lostspirit]

I noticed on the Mac 2.0.0 version that the font cache dialog flashes briefly between each video in a playlist.

Since I'm using VLC as my kiosk, kind of a bummer.

Options?

[nkoriyama]

Already fixed in 2.0.1. Please wait a while.