Opening VLC media player 3 takes a long time to open

Question

VLC Media Player 3.0.8 is taking a long time to launch on my Windows 10 PC. It typically takes 6 seconds or more. I have a class 50 SSD, Six Core Xeon 2.90GHz, etc.

How can I speed up the loading time of VLC?

Answer 1

There can be many causes for a slow launch in VLC 3, but here are two solutions I've confirmed help:

Soltion A
VLCwin7User on the VideoLan forums came up a solution that I will paraphase and add to:

1. Bring up an administrative command prompt in the vlc.exe directory. This would typically be C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC for 32-bit, or C:\Program Files\VideoLan\VLC for 64-bit.
   (To bring up an administrative prompt in this directory, open the Start menu and type cmd. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator. Then type cd, space, and then the VLC directory, and press enter.)

2. Issue vlc-cache-gen .\plugins enter... which generates \plugins\plugins.dat

This brought launch time down to less than a second on my machine.

---

Solution B
This is the solution I had originally tried, but it only reduced the launch time by about 25%. I'm putting it here for completeness. I did not notice this making much difference after using Solution A from above.

1. Open VLC preferences via the menu or by pressing CTRL+P.
2. Select show settings > All from the bottom left corner
3. In the Advanced section, uncheck "Scan for new plugins"