Building font cache

[DJX]

That works for now...good find.

Still should be fixed properly though.

[chief piggum]

Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up

Solution:

Open VLC player.

On Menu Bar:

Tools
Preferences

(at bottom - left side)
Show settings -- ALL

Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module - change this to "Dummy font renderer function"

Save
Exit

Re-open - done.
Progy will no longer look outside self for fonts
Please post reply, I'll debug more if not working.

this works for me. thanks man!!!!!

[JDCorley]

Definitely is working for me. Thanks for the fix!

[blank]

Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up

Solution:

Open VLC player.

On Menu Bar:

Tools
Preferences

(at bottom - left side)
Show settings -- ALL

Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module - change this to "Dummy font renderer function"

Save
Exit

Re-open - done.
Progy will no longer look outside self for fonts
Please post reply, I'll debug more if not working.

just changed the setting. hope it works :d
thanks if so.

[jsmorley]

Thank goodness. This seems to work so far. If so, it will be the only thing that saves me from giving up on VLC completely. It has rebuilt my font cache on average every 3rd movie with times ranging from 30 seconds to several minutes. It made the app unusable. After many years of using VLC exclusively, that would have been a shame.

[hereiam]

Thank you to azthai.

Your reply is exactly correcting problem. VLC is my top pick media player until problem of font cache popup. Now resolved, much happy.
God bless you.

[POQbum]

Thank-you. It worked.
VLC developers need to remove this piece of junk, does more harm than good. I shouldn't have to spend 10 minutes looking for a way to disable it.
The small 2% of people who actually would like that feature should spend the 10 minutes to enable it.

[BigMischa]

I had the same problems with the new 1.1.3 Version of VLC Player.
I installed VLC on my 1 week old Win 7 64 Bit system, and it opens the fontcache dialog right when i want to play the first videofile, even if it has no subtitles. i can see the fontcache progressbar, but nothing happens. then the whole system freezes, I even can't open the taskmanager.

In my folder %appdata% there is a folder called VLC but there are only two files in it. What files should be there normally?
I think that somehow either the fontcache file can't be created because of accessproblems or somehow the fontcache has problems reading the fonts in my windows folder.

disabeling the subtitle options worked, but this is no solution, because I often watch movies in foreign language and need the subtitles.

most curious thing about it: before i had installed 1.1.2 on the same system, and it was running without problems, even with subtitles activated.

[sendblink23]

That is not a solution.. the Subtitles don't work after that

*its good that it stops making the font cache thing... but its not entirely worth it for users who often use subtitles

Back to older vlc versions

[BigMischa]

Yes, I agree, that's no solution, just a workaround.

But even when I install VLC 1.1.2 again (that's the version that previously worked with the subtitles), the player want's to build up a frontcache at start of the fist movie and crashes the whole system.

I have even tried VLC 1.1.0, but the same happens.

I'd like to use 1.1.2 or higher, because of the video card acceleration feature for ATI videocards. It seems like those feature makes big mkv and m2ts files work more fluidly.

Please dear VLC Team, we need a suitable solution here!

[BigMischa]

Same Problem still exists in 1.1.4

I've tried running as administrator: same problem
I've tried deleting %appdata%/Roaming/vlc: Folder gets re-created, but when the fontcache get's refreshed, the system freezes again.

Here are some details, perhaps this will help you trouble shooting:
I am running Win7 64 Bit Home Prof in German.
The user i use to log in is password-protected and has administrator rights.
The folder %appdata%/Roaming/vlc seems to bee accessible, because the files ml.xspf, vlc-qt-interface.ini and vlcrc are created. Where is the fontcache file located and what's it's name?
I have no additional fonts installed, the system is very new (installed a few weeks ago).
The last VLC version that worked with subtitles on my system was VLC 1.1.2. The problem started when trying to update to 1.1.3 (at first I deinstalled 1.1.2). Because the version 1.1.3 didn't work, I tried to downgrade to 1.1.2 again, but then the same problem occoured there.
The only solution is to set the font renderer to dummy font.

[VLC_help]

Font cache files are also stored to %appdata%\vlc, they are name like d031bbba323fd9e5b47e0ee5a0353f11-i686.cache-2, d031bbba323fd9e5b47e0ee5a0353f11-i686.cache-3 etc.

[BigMischa]

so it seems like the fontcache files aren't even created when VLC shows "building fontcache".

[VLC_help]

AFAIK if the creation fails, no files are created. And because of this VLC tries again and again and again.

[BigMischa]

It seems like I have identified what's the problem.

I have installed G-Data Internet Security 2011 on my system.
There I have a "Wächter"-function (like a "guard"-function, I have a german system, so I don't know how it's called in english. It's the function that scans files in background for virusses). This "Wächter" uses two engines: A and B.

Per default both engines are used to scan for virusses in the background.
If i disable engine A, so that only engine B is working, the rebuilding of the fontcache works again. The built takes about a minute, but this only happens once (after installing). I can provoke building the fontcache when deleting the %appdata%/roaming/vlc folder.

And still it's the same: if engine A + B are active, the system freezes and crashes completely, and if I activate only engine B, everything works fine...


Very strange behaviour. The question is: whose fault is it? Does VLC something that looks suspicious to some Internet Security Suites? Or the the G-Data Internet Security justa bit too accurate?

[VLC_help]

It is G-Datas fault if you get crash or freeze.

[CritterNYC]

If VLC is crashing/hanging while rebuilding the font cache, I'd wager you have some corrupt fonts installed on your system. You should try and determine what those are and remove them. There are a few tools that can assist, but I have no experience with them, so Google would be the next step.

[BigMischa]

If VLC is crashing/hanging while rebuilding the font cache, I'd wager you have some corrupt fonts installed on your system. You should try and determine what those are and remove them. There are a few tools that can assist, but I have no experience with them, so Google would be the next step.

the system has been installes just a few weeks ago. i don't think there ary any corrupt files. i even haven't installed additional fonts yet.

the problem seems to be caused by G-Data Internet Security 2011 Software, see my older post above.

[CritterNYC]

the system has been installes just a few weeks ago. i don't think there ary any corrupt files. i even haven't installed additional fonts yet.

the problem seems to be caused by G-Data Internet Security 2011 Software, see my older post above.

That appears to be correct in your specific situation. My reply was a general one to one of the other possible causes of this issue (I doubt everyone is using G-Data).

[BigMischa]

ah, ok. i thought you were talking to me.

i think it would be helpful to know, what exactly happens during the building of the fontcache. which folders are read out, which folders are written to? are there any other tings that happen, perhaps reading or writing in the registry?

[CritterNYC]

ah, ok. i thought you were talking to me.

i think it would be helpful to know, what exactly happens during the building of the fontcache. which folders are read out, which folders are written to? are there any other tings that happen, perhaps reading or writing in the registry?

I can't speak directly, as I haven't hacked the core VLC code, but I have worked with VLC quite a bit in packaging VLC Portable with PortableApps.com. It appear that it reads in the fonts from the Windows\Fonts directory and then creates the cache based on that. The result is then saved in %APPDATA%\vlc as LONGALPHASTRING.cache-2. No registry keys are altered during the process. As with many cross-platform apps, VLC is pretty light in terms of creating any deeper hooks into Windows, which is to say that it doesn't create any.

[POQbum]

Ugh I just reinstalled my OS and now I have to look up how to disable this POS again.

Seriously stop screwing up an already good player. All that's needed is to add codec's when they're released and maybe minor tweaks but this thing builds a font cache for 10 minutes everytime I load a video with NO SUBTITLES in the video! I have no extra fonts installed just default.

Really annoying I hope VLC developers fix this in next versions instead of assuming it's problems with people's PC's.
I'm sure if I spent $1k on a processor it'll only take 30 seconds but it's still really annoying. I have Quad core processor and it's just irritating using this player without disabling this.

[fontcache]

I got this fixed by right-clicking vlc.exe and setting the file to run in compatibility mode for Win2000, and I also ticked disable Advanced Text Services.
I then opened a movie file and closed VLC again.
I then turned off the compatibility mode of vlc.exe and reinstated the text services.

Dunno why this should work, but it has worked for me and subtitles still show... I'm running XP.

[c0b4lt]

I've had this same problem in windows 7 where the font cache rebuilds every file VLC plays. The solution for me was simply to Right-Click the shortcut and select Run as Administrator and provide administrator credentials. the user account I log in with to my PC is a domain user with roaming profile that does not have Admin rights. And so VLC running as this user apparently did not have the necessary privileges to create the font cache which is why it kept attempting to create it. I suggest others simply try the Run as Administrator option if their version of Windows has it before trying any other so called work-around. You may find it is less frustrating.

[blank]

why the hell hasnt this been fixed yet? got the newest version of VLC on my laptop, and still having the damn problem. so annoying.
so i have to google and search the forums all over again to find the fix.

is there a VLC like alternative that actually works? if so im switching.