VST scan

Ian_S wrote on 6/26/2024, 4:51 AM

I've noticed that start up times for Vegas Pro (21, build 315, but I noticed it on earlier v.21 builds) are considerably longer than they used to be. Without loading a project, start up now takes just over two minutes - more than double what it took with earlier versions. This is on a reasonably quick i9 with 64GB RAM and m.2 drives.

As expected, the VST scan is adding the longest chunk of time. I should add that I have not added any new plugins for a while, so I don't understand why the check would take so much longer than before. Has the nature of the check changed?

I have been through the list of VSTs shown on the Preferences/VST Effects tab and deselected those I don't use in Vegas. That was a painful task - there is no way to select multiple plugins or sort by vendor. Strangely, the Plug-In Chooser still displays a number of VSTs that no longer exist on my machine. I'm guessing that's a registry hangover? Anyway, this still doesn't stop the long VST check on start-up (and NOVSTGROVEL does not seem to work, at least not in this build).

Is there any other way to skip the VST check, and is there any risk in doing so? What exactly does it do?

Three years ago the devs stated that they were wanting to improve the way Vegas works with VSTs - has any progress been made on this?

Thanks for your advice and thoughts.

Comments

Gid wrote on 6/26/2024, 5:37 AM

@Ian_S Interesting that it is looking for VST plugins that no longer exist, could that be the added delay time when opening?

Try deleting these two files from the AppData BIN section, it'll be slow to open Vegas the first time as it creates these two files again as it searches for plugins , Close Vegas & open it again...

Ian_S wrote on 6/26/2024, 6:37 AM

Thanks Gid. Interestingly, that didn't do anything, so I assumed the plugins must still be installed somewhere - or at least referenced in the Registry. Some of the plugins are left over from an old install of Cakewalk Sonar. Sonar was uninstalled, but the plugins were not. The reason I couldn't find them in the three VST plugin folders I have, is because they are DX plugins! I guess these are not detected by the VST scan at start up. Anyway, I manually deleted them (there is no uninstall option), deleted the two cache files again, rebooted the PC and restarted Vegas. And they are still showing! I've run out of time to troubleshoot this more today and need to get going to a four day location shoot, but I will be back at my desk Tuesday and will explore this further. Cheers!

Dexcon wrote on 6/26/2024, 6:46 AM

If you've uninstalled the plugins but there may be files still lurking in the registry, maybe try using a free registry cleaner such as CCleaner (which I use) or Revo Uninstaller the latter of which has been often mentioned on the forum over the years when registry cleaning is beng discussed.

Ian_S wrote on 6/26/2024, 6:58 AM

Thanks Dexcon. I'll try that when I get home.

NickHope wrote on 6/26/2024, 8:45 AM

To flush out the non-existent plugins, you could try removing the folders that are searched from the pane at the top of the window (except for the MAGIX plugins, which you can't remove), then restarting Vegas, then re-adding them so that they are newly scanned.

I can't guarantee this will work, and of course you'll then have to repeat the painful process of deselecting all the VSTs you don't want Vegas to make available (that window badly needs a simple "Select All/Select None" feature for those of us who have a lot of VSTs).

Three years ago the devs stated that they were wanting to improve the way Vegas works with VSTs - has any progress been made on this?

VST3 is now supported, and VSTs in general are more stable than they were.

RogerS wrote on 6/26/2024, 8:59 AM

VST support has been overhauled and at least for the ones I use the tearing, delays and glitches are addressed and having the ability to use 64-bit VST3s is a great improvement. If you still see problems with specific ones please report them on the forum so development can continue to improve it.

Ian_S wrote on 7/8/2024, 5:45 AM

UPDATE: I removed all the paths to VSTs, one at a time, except the Magix plugins path, which cannot be removed.

When I removed the VST2 path, not a lot happened as most of my third party VSTs are VST3.

When I removed the VST3 path, Vegas boot time was reduced from over two minutes to around 15 seconds. I believe the plugins that were taking the longest time to load are UAD plugins (Universal Audio - I have the Spark subscription and they load very quickly in Studio One). Even though I rarely use these plugins in Vegas, and had removed most of them from the 'Select VST effects to be available . . .' table, they were still scanned on startup. I have now added a new path which points specifically to the FabFilter plugins folder, which are the only ones I use in Vegas, and not to the general C:/Program Files/Common Files/VST3 folder. Vegas boot time is still around 15 seconds.

The unwanted (and not even installed) SonitusFX plugins remained! These are DX plugins left over from an old Cakewalk Sonar installation. I managed to get rid of them by deleting entries in the registry (which I am never wildly happy about having to do). The keys I deleted were mostly variations of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\VEGAS Creative Software\VEGAS Pro\21.0\DXCache . . . where 21.0 was 18.0, 19.0, 20.0 and 21.0. I tried CCleaner to tidy up the register but it had no effect (on this issue).

That removed the unwanted Sonitus plugins. It still leaves the ExpressFX plugins that I would be happy to ditch (frustrating that you can't turn these off or uninstall them) but I can live with that by just displaying third party plugins.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with suggestions and advice. Much appreciated. I now have a much more slimline and usable audio FX plugin chooser and significantly faster start up time.