Problem
A plug-in refuses to scan and blocks the scanning process seemingly indefinitely.
Cause
Some plugins seem to spend a very long time doing stuff and never return. They may be checking license status, attempt to connect to a server, or whatever. Sometimes a plug-in opens a dialog window that may be obscured or otherwise hidden, so you never get around to dismissing it.
Solution
Be patient and wait 3 minutes after which the scanner will dismiss the plug-in and exclude it from being considered in future scans by adding it to the file BannedPlugins64.txt in /Library/Application Support/Cognitone/Resources (Windows: C:\ProgramData\Cognitone\Resources).
If you want to retry scanning all plug-ins from scratch, you can do at any time. Just select the option Scan All (Reset) before you start a scan.
Comments
Sat, 2023-09-09 - 14:56 Permalink
Which syntax is needed for the entries in BannedPlugins64.txt?
Something like "WAVESTATION (VST)" as shown in the Scanner.log or only "WAVESTATION" seems not to work.
Ok, this works:
C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins\KORG\WAVESTATION.dll
Wed, 2024-02-28 - 00:06 Permalink
I couldn't find the BannedPlugins64.txt file in the path mentioned above for Windows, but managed to find it in C:\Program Files\Cognitone\Audio\Resources
Not sure if it's right to update that file directly but it did allow me to skip a couple of plugins that were causing issues.
Mon, 2025-12-29 - 15:07 Permalink
For the record, I achieved (at least temporary) satisfaction here by copying the contents of the Synfire-written file BrokenPlugins64.txt into
C:\Program Files\Cognitone\Audio\Resources\BannedPlugins64.txt
This did successfully cause the constant re-scan of the reported broken plugins on every startup to cease.
After this, there were still a few stragglers, plugins that never made it into BrokenPlugins64.txt, but which were continuing to delay Synfire's startup.
I captured a screenshot of the announcement of the stragglers,
then found those plugins and manually added them to BannedPlugins64.txt.
As of 20251229, my BannedPlugins64.txt file has 25 lines in it.
FWIW, UJAM and Steinberg plus were the primary offenders.
At this moment in time, I have Synfire starting up without any obvious hangs or reported plugin errors.
Mon, 2025-12-29 - 19:25 Permalink
The files in BrokenPlugins64.txt should not be scanned again unless you run a scan with the reset option. Moving them to BannedPlugins64.txt bans them permanently no matter how you run a scan