VLC very slow to start

[foockinho]

Hi
i have installed VLC 2.2.0-pre2 weatherwax on Ubuntu Gnome and ive tested it also on another desktop enviroment (LXDE) and same issue.

First start after reboot or long period without use and lasts like 1 minute or 2 to open. Once open, i can close it and reopen and its fast.

ive installed vlc from official ubuntu repos, so theres no way to install it bad...

my laptop is an i5 with 6gb ram and dual video cards (intel + Nvidia 2gb)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

ive installed vlc from official ubuntu repos, so theres no way to install it bad...

So you say. But how do you explain the slowness starting up then?

[foockinho]

by the way i dont have an AV installed on linux. Is there any problem with the plugins.dat generation on a single gnome session? having in mind that the user have privileges to create files in his own home directory.

thanks for your work. dont get upset... answer when you have time.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

It wouldn't be unheard of that a distribution packaging is failing to generate the plugins.dat file properly.

[foockinho]

uhm ok, should i try to compile vlc ?

[bluemoon4ever]

found this on another site, seems to work

VLC loading slow FIXED
I have Vista 32bit loaded on my machine. I have been trying to figure out what is going on with VLC loading so slowly, and I finally figured it out. Its Microsoft Sivlerlight that caused the problems. After uninstalling Silverlight VLC loads fast stand alone or linked to file associations. Hope this helps..

@ edit ... nope this doesnt work either!!

1st Load is Slow
2nd, 3rd etc are fine.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1st load is normal.

[WieboJW]

(This post also placed on tropic https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=95831)
Hay, a summary of all posts above.
I got finally the possible SOLUTION out of thread - VLC Media Player 1.1.11 The Luggage slow open from Nov 23, 2011
A very rude and unrespectful Post to the developers by sniffy45 on Nov 12, 2014 did give me the answer
I'm running VLC media player 2.1.5 Rincewind on a Intel i5 Desktop with OS Win 7 (64bit) updated 2015may08
In Malwarebytes (pro) lays the problem. Go to Settings - Malware exclusions - select C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe
(maybe you have to add also C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc-cache-gen.exe)
Only with VLC.exe added VLC opens on my 8 gB memory PC in 3 secs now.
Greets from "half down under water" Holland)

other possible SOLUTION in tropic VLC very slow to start Posted very clear by wroot on Mar 07, 2015 11:29 am
This thread this problem started with the release of 2.x version. 1.x version was always instant to launch no matter the permissions or AV software in use.
I was using the same OS, same AV software with VLC 1.x and then updated to 2.x and suddenly VLC startup became 10+ seconds.

The most impactful thing was to exclude VLC folder in AV software (using Avast, excluding "Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\*" R and X checked (read and execute)).
This has made VLC to launch in a few seconds or faster.

Also usefull pages are
https://www.vlchelp.com/guides/
http://www.ghacks.net/2013/09/25/get-vl ... ayer-tips/
http://www.wowza.com/forums/content.php ... nd-tuning)
(Google tags - VLC media player opens slow VLC starts slow VLC slow loading VLC running slow VLC slow open)

[VLCwin7User]

I have an I7-3770, so I never really paid attention to the startup issue in VLC. But, upon reading this thread, I made the plugins.dat writable by users. Then I started up VLC and the file got deleted, and was never created again.

Then, I made the folder/directory "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins" writable by an ordinary user, and then the plugins.dat file was present, with a current time stamp. It seems it is deleted and recreated each time VLC is started.

Under the standard MS Windows security, files in "C:\Program Files (x86)\" are not to be writable by an ordinary user. That is to protect files from being appended to, such as dll or exe files.

So, it's looking like I need to make "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins" writable by the user, since plugins.dat is located in that folder, and then if I want to reinstate the Windows security model, I need to prevent the user from writing to C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins\access and the other files in order to protect the .dll located within.

So, I agree with the other poster that indicated that plugins.dat needs to be located in a user writable location, such as %appdata%. Unfortunately, since plugins.dat needs to be writable and is currently in the Program Files location, this setup follows the Win95 security model.

Still, happy as a clam with the new VLC. Hadn't updated since VLC media player 2.0.6 - happy to see that what I ran previously still runs, along with the new VP9.

[wroot]

So, I agree with the other poster that indicated that plugins.dat needs to be located in a user writable location, such as %appdata%. Unfortunately, since plugins.dat needs to be writable and is currently in the Program Files location, this setup follows the Win95 security model.

Be careful, you are stepping on a shaky ground here Developers will insure you that most of their users want to run multiple versions of VLC on their PCs, so they would want to use the same plugins cache, or that multiple users should use the same plugins cache, because their probably all use the same stuff (as they share same PC, collective mind probably). It's probably 90% of they users, you know.

/s

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

plugins.dat does not need to be writable. VLC might try to write it for the sake of robustness: The file may be missing because of manual installations especially. But it is not an issue if the file is not writable, as long as the content is correct.

plugins.dat should be generated at VLC installation. At that point, the plugins directory most definitely ought to be writable.

[VLCwin7User]

I ran the installer as admin, so plugins.dat got created, no problem. VLC is trying to delete and create the file during its normal operation, so I wound up losing the file while playing with it.

It was easy to reinstate plugins.dat, simply start VLC as admin, and presto, file was recreated. Back to running VLC as an ordinary user now.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So, I agree with the other poster that indicated that plugins.dat needs to be located in a user writable location, such as %appdata%. Unfortunately, since plugins.dat needs to be writable and is currently in the Program Files location, this setup follows the Win95 security model.

Be careful, you are stepping on a shaky ground here Developers will insure you that most of their users want to run multiple versions of VLC on their PCs, so they would want to use the same plugins cache, or that multiple users should use the same plugins cache, because their probably all use the same stuff (as they share same PC, collective mind probably). It's probably 90% of they users, you know.

/s

You're just very uninformative.

The plugins cache needs to be on a writable location depending on the VLC plugins installed on the computer. This is not user-dependant, but machine-dependant, therefore it is installed in the correct place, NOT in %appdata%, because appdata is user-dependant.

Trolling stupidly will not get you very far.

[boldizar96]

Guys, I found something!!!

Open: Tools -> Preferences
Under Show Setting select "All" to show all settings
Go to: Playlist
Uncheck everything except: "Pause on audio communication" and "Automatically preparse files"
Click Save

Before that my VLC start time was about 10 seconds, but now it's less than 1 second!!!

I hope I could help!

[wroot]

Didn't do anything for me. Maybe it is a bit faster when starting VLC alone. But i test this by launching a movie file (with a double click) after a system reboot (+1 min. wait for everything to load). It still takes long and actually when Auto Start is disabled in the Playlist settings you also have to press Play additionally to start playing a movie. In my case excluding in the antivirus settings is still the best solution.

[PluX]

Running Win7 X64 and experiencing these same slow loading problems with VLC 2.0.X and 2.2.1. Which i also discribed in a seperate post. Loading any file (networked, from USB devices or from local disk) takes between 40 seconds and 1 minute. It used to be near-instantly. Tried all solutions to this i could find, but neither cache nor AV scanners seem to be the problem and resetting vlc does not have any effect, media library is disabled as well and changing playlist settings or the folder security for vlc or plugins dir did not work either. The machine rarely reboots and usually just hibernates. I hope there is something we are overlooking and something else we could try because this is making it very hard to work with VLC

When i drag and drop files into an already loaded player they open instantly, It just takes ages to load the application itself.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Running Win7 X64 and experiencing these same slow loading problems with VLC 2.0.X and 2.2.1. Which i also discribed in a seperate post. Loading any file (networked, from USB devices or from local disk) takes between 40 seconds and 1 minute. It used to be near-instantly. Tried all solutions to this i could find, but neither cache nor AV scanners seem to be the problem and resetting vlc does not have any effect, media library is disabled as well and changing playlist settings or the folder security for vlc or plugins dir did not work either. The machine rarely reboots and usually just hibernates. I hope there is something we are overlooking and something else we could try because this is making it very hard to work with VLC

When i drag and drop files into an already loaded player they open instantly, It just takes ages to load the application itself.

MKV?

[Ultraspider]

Hello,
As this is the first result in google regarding that problem, I'm going to reply in it with another possible cause and solution.

My system: Win 7 64bit, VLC 2.2.4, desktop computer.

Long story short, I noticed a lot of activity related to wacom and tablet input dll's when the vlc process was hanging.
I remembered already having issues with other software (photoshop, battle.net, ...) and tablet input (remember I'm on a desktop with no touch input). Stopping the service named "Tablet PC Input Service" solved these issues.

I searched that way and found a service called "TabletServicePen" from Wacom. Disabling the service "TabletServicePen" solved my issue with vlc. It now starts without any delay.

Workaround for tablet users:
As disabling the service can prevent my wacom tablet to work, I searched a bit & found that page ( http://viziblr.com/news/2011/8/13/fix-m ... ows-7.html ) which provide a software to disable all the windows touch and pen setting that could interfere with the wacom tablet on that OS. Applying those settings now allowed to restart the wacom service and still have the issue solved with VLC. Dunno if it will hold a reboot though. not tested yet.

Hope that helps.
Cheers.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

It's probably a Qt issue, btw.

[smarty123]

I am having the startup issue (on all systems regardles if touch,non touch, notebook or Desktop-PC - all systems Windows 10 Pro. Same happens on Server 2016 standard

3.0.0-git X64 (current build 23.11.2016 and months before)
---------
first start takes about 25 seconds to display GUI of VLC
all future starts until reboot take about 0.5 seconds

2.2.4 release X64
--------
always starts up in under one second
- but does not support my panasonic dlna server and even not plex media server to be played (both devices show up but cannot be drilled down). V3.0.0 does support both of them thats why i need 3.0 features.

[railfan-eric]

i don't know if my problem was related but on a fresh win10 install i was having slow startup up to 30secs for any videos on the USB hard drive. thought my hard drive was having problems or something. i watched the task manager and most the time when this was happening the windows defender would start scanning whenever i would click on a video to watch from the USB hard drive. i since put AVG on and now all is good. i wonder why windows defender would hold up VLC from loading a video?

[smarty123]

calling vlc-cache-gen.exe ./plugins from the vlc installation folder (runtime=2secs) solves the problem until next reboot.
Once rebooting a windows 10 system and then (even after some minutes windows up) calling vlc.exe without doing vlc-cache-gen.de before still takes about 30 seconds to display the vlc 3.0 gui

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Of course, if VLC files are in the disk I/O cache, then loading VLC is much faster. This is true of any application (of reasonably small size).

The more relevant matter is the delay difference between starting after reboot, and starting after reboot and deletion of the plugins.dat file.

[smarty123]

reboot with programfiles/vlc/plugins/plugins.dat present: about 25sec on a i5/8Gig/SSD.

deleted plugins.dat
rebooted again
vlc gui is loading 25 secs

deleted vlcrc from appdata/vlc
rebooted again
vlc gui is shown quickly

reverting to 2.2.4 /x64 -> fast start always. Since 2.2.4 does not support my panasonic tv dlna server streaming and 3.0 does i need 3.0

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

In that case, it's ostensibly got nothing to do with plugins.dat, and everything with your VLC preferences.