I recently had the problem that my VLC Media Player took about a minute to start. First I didn’t know what caused the problem until I remembered that I imported my Music Library into VLC, so it always scanned the whole Library to import the meta data.
To disable the Media Library do as follows:
Open: Tools -> Preferences
Under Show Setting select «All» to show all settings
Go to: Playlist
Uncheck «Use Media Library»
Click «Save» to finish
Now your VLC should start up quickly again.