Miscellaneous

VLC – Disable Font Cache

February 19, 2011

As much as I like VLC I tend to favour Media Player Classic – Home Cinema. However I still find myself switching between the two for different tasks, as they each have their strengths and can handle certain situations better. My digital camcorder saves all of its videos as MOV files and since I would never use QuickTime unless my life depended on it I find myself using VLC as it handles them better. MPC will run MOV files however strange things happen when I drag it from one screen to another or maximize the window, I’ll end up with a frozen video or just a black screen but with the audio playing. VLC, on the other hand, insists upon rebuilding it’s font cache every time I open up a video and it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the size of the video. As you can imagine, this can be quite frustrating, so here’s how to prevent this from happening:

  1. Open VLC
  2. Click Tools->Preferences on the main menu
  3. On the bottom left of Preferences window click the All option under Show Settings
  4. Expand the Video container
  5. Click the Subtitles/OSD container (don’t expand it, just click the parent container)
  6. Select “Dummy font renderer function” from the Text Rendering Module dropdown
  7. Click Save

Now you won’t ever have to see the annoying “Rebuilding Font Cache” screen again 😀

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