VLC can take 33 seconds to begin taking part in an MP3 on some Home windows PCs, and VideoLAN, the builders behind the open-source media participant, says a Microsoft Defender bug is guilty.
Jonathan Blow, the sport designer and programmer behind Braid and The Witness, stated he had lastly switched from VLC to Microsoft’s Media Participant as a result of the previous had turn out to be painfully gradual, then used the second to declare that “a big sector of open supply software program is in a really embarrassing place now.”
VideoLAN couldn’t let this criticism slide and accused Microsoft, saying a Home windows 11 Defender replace was interfering with VLC’s plugin cache. Nevertheless, we checked VLC’s bug reviews and located a number of customers on Home windows 10 and Home windows 11 describing the identical startup drawback.
VLC says Microsoft Defender is behind the 33-second delay
Notice that the criticism is for MP3 information and never movies, which is what VLC is usually related to. I’ve already offered my soul to streaming companies like Spotify, and didn’t have any expertise of a delay like this regardless of utilizing VLC each different day.
However for these of you who use VLC to hearken to music and have skilled a 33-second delay, the supposed purpose is VLC’s plugin cache.
However why VLC wants a plugin cache within the first place?
This was Blow’s follow-up query to VLC, and it piqued my curiosity as nicely, as a result of why does a media participant want a cache in any respect simply to play one MP3?
Nicely, because it seems, VLC is constructed nearly fully out of plugins, codecs, demuxers, enter and output modules are all loaded on demand as an alternative of coded into one binary. All of those are listed in a file named plugins.dat.
The cache exists so it doesn’t need to re-scan the entire plugins folder each time you open a media file. It’s an affordable design, however turns into a single level of failure when one thing, Defender or in any other case, will get between VLC and that file.
VLC additionally contains vlc-cache-gen.exe, which may regenerate the cache, and doing so or reinstalling VLC ought to repair the issue, in keeping with the group.
Right here’s the factor, although. I went trying by way of VLC’s public problem tracker as an alternative of taking both aspect’s phrase for it, and I discovered that the image is rather a lot much less clear.
VLC’s bug report reveals this isn’t only a Home windows 11 drawback
Gradual VLC startups on Home windows aren’t new. Forum threads on this complaint return nicely over a 12 months. One consumer on Home windows 10 described a 24 second delay that vanished as quickly as VLC had been opened as soon as, then got here again after the PC sat idle for some time.
On VLC’s tracker, one consumer stated swapping out a Qt plugin didn’t repair something, however regenerating plugins.dat did. One other Home windows 11 consumer working a Ryzen 9 9800X3D and 32GB of DDR5, hardly a machine that ought to wrestle to open an MP3, stated refreshing the cache solved it too. A number of folks confirmed the identical workaround on their machines.
The unique bug reporter pushed again on regenerating the cache, although. He stated plugins.dat already existed on each of his affected machines, and when he swapped in a known-good cache file, the startup delay went away. It’s a meaningfully completely different failure mode than the lacking cache, which is why VLC’s maintainers reopened the difficulty and stored digging into how the cache and Home windows Defender work together.
One VLC developer ultimately got here to the identical conclusion as VideoLAN’s tweet, that the slowdown appears to be like prefer it’s brought on by Home windows Defender no matter what state the plugin cache is in. One other had marked the entire thing “fastened” earlier as a result of regenerating the cache appeared to unravel it for them. Each had been proper, for various customers. Some folks discovered that excluding the entire VLC folder from Defender labored when excluding simply vlc.exe didn’t, which tells you Defender is concerned right here someplace for actual, even when no one’s pinned down the mechanism but.
So no, this isn’t a made-up excuse. Nevertheless it’s additionally not the one which received flattened on social media saying Microsoft broke open supply.
The best way to repair VLC when it takes endlessly to begin on Home windows
If VLC all of a sudden takes 10, 20, or 30 seconds to open, strive these steps earlier than disabling Microsoft Defender:
- Regenerate VLC’s plugin cache with vlc-cache-gen.exe from the VLC set up folder, concentrating on the plugins listing.
- Reinstall VLC utilizing the official installer so the plugin cache is generated once more.
A number of customers have reported that regenerating the cache fixes the issue, whereas others discovered that excluding the VLC folder restored instantaneous startup. The outcomes aren’t similar for everybody, which is another excuse to not deal with one workaround as common.
Calling open supply embarrassing is a bit too simple
Blow’s not flawed that ready half a minute to play an MP3 on a contemporary PC is absurd. The place he loses me is popping one bug right into a verdict on open supply software program as a class. VLC has an actual cache drawback its personal builders are nonetheless working by way of, and VideoLAN additionally has actual proof accusing Defender.
Nevertheless, there’s some irony in what Blow switched to, as nicely. Home windows Newest has already checked out Microsoft’s Media Player and found it’s the slower, heavier option, taking noticeably longer to open a video than VLC does, utilizing round 377MB of RAM at idle, and nonetheless choking on codecs like HEVC that VLC opens with no second thought.
Both method, VLC has to work round no matter Home windows throws at it, particularly contemplating that it isn’t the one good media participant available in the market.
If you’d like a sooner open-source participant, strive mpv
We might not inform everybody to desert VLC due to this bug, particularly when yours really nonetheless makes use of it to this present day. However if you’re already searching for one thing lighter, mpv is price attempting.
mpv is a free, open-source media participant with a intentionally minimal interface and a powerful concentrate on efficiency and suppleness. It’s much less pleasant for rookies than VLC, and the UI might take time getting used to, however that simplicity can also be a part of the enchantment.
For most individuals, VLC is the better suggestion as a result of it provides you a well-known interface and nearly each playback possibility in a single place. However after a 33-second wait to play an MP3, no one can blame a Home windows consumer for attempting one thing else.
