Severe caption lag

English Applications
1

when playing youtube videos (eg: http://youtu.be/nOEK5A967dk) at increased speeds captions do not keep up, even at merely 1.25x captions already noticeably lag, as speed further increases the lag quickly becomes severe, are others seeing this? i’ve seen it for years so i wonder if it does not manifest on other platforms. it manifests identically on either chromium or firefox nightly on either my laptop:

 # inxi -bz
System:
  Kernel: 6.14.6-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Console: pty pts/6 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250522
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20C6008SUS v: ThinkPad Edge E540
    serial: <filter>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: 20C6008SUS v: 0B98401 WIN serial: <filter>
    UEFI: LENOVO v: J9ETA2WW (2.28 ) date: 06/20/2018
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 0 Wh (0.0%) condition: 33.6/52.8 Wh (63.6%) volts: 9.7
    min: 11.1
CPU:
  Info: dual core Intel Core i5-4200M [MT MCP] speed (MHz): avg: 800
    min/max: 800/3100
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915
    v: kernel
  Device-2: Realtek Integrated Camera driver: uvcvideo type: USB
  Display: unspecified server: X.Org v: 21.1.15 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.6
    driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: vesa dri: crocus gpu: i915
    resolution: 1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1366x768~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 25.1.1
    renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2)
  Info: Tools: api: eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
    de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor gpu: gputop, intel_gpu_top, lsgpu
    wl: wayland-info x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    driver: r8169
  Device-2: Intel Wireless 7260 driver: iwlwifi
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 368.46 GiB (79.1%)
Info:
  Memory: total: 8 GiB available: 7.65 GiB used: 4.62 GiB (60.5%) igpu: 32 MiB
  Processes: 271 Uptime: 43d 10h 54m Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.37
 #

or my desktop:

 # inxi -bz
System:
  Kernel: 6.15.2-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Console: pty pts/10 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250617
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF v: N/A serial: <filter>
  Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 1998 serial: <filter> UEFI: Hewlett-Packard v: L01 v02.33
    date: 07/15/2014
CPU:
  Info: quad core Intel Core i7-4770 [MT MCP] speed (MHz): avg: 797 min/max: 800/3900
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915
    v: kernel
  Display: unspecified server: X.org v: 1.21.1.15 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.6 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: vesa dri: crocus gpu: i915 tty: 213x59 resolution: 1: 1920x1080
    2: 1920x1080
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: mesa v: 25.1.3 note: console (EGL sourced)
    renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2), llvmpipe (LLVM 20.1.6 256 bits)
  Info: Tools: api: eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor
    wl: wayland-info x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I217-LM driver: e1000e
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 5.57 TiB used: 583.52 GiB (10.2%)
Info:
  Memory: total: 24 GiB available: 23.38 GiB used: 11.31 GiB (48.4%) igpu: 32 MiB
  Processes: 378 Uptime: 25d 23h 56m Init: systemd Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.37
 #
2

Well, first off, I’ll not tap on a “http” link, (and of course, my Brave browser will decline executing an http URL).

The other thing I find interesting is the “increase the video speed”. I’ve never done that, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I did the “speed up” YouTube setting, with Closed Caption enabled, just out of curiosity. (I viewed 2-3 “Itchy Boots” videos - we enjoy her motorcycle adventures).

Absolutely zero lag of captions. And I set the video speed to 2x !!

A couple of differences:

We use Leap 15.6 vs TW.

Our primary browser for general use is Brave

(sidenote: interesting this has been an issue “for years”).

3

No problem here with TW, Firefox, video speed at 2x.
Noticing that

Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915
    v: kernel

possibly has an incomplete or faulty Vulkan implementation (as many older Intel’s) but I don’t know if that might be related.

4

sorry for omitting the “s” in my OP: (eg: https://youtu.be/nOEK5A967dk)(same as https://youtube.com/watch?v=nOEK5A967dk)

it seems there’s some correlation with whether youtube captions are submitted or auto generated.

captions were apparently submitted for the above video. it seems such captions are displayed as a sequence of blocks, and increasingly lag as speed increases, on opensuse tumbleweed chromium or firefox nightly.

by comparison captions were apparently auto generated for both https://youtube.com/watch?v=wfyP7vxcGA4 and https://youtube.com/watch?v=_NDGgd9b7N4. it seems such captions scroll a line at a time, and don’t lag too terribly even at high speeds.

on my android 14 tablet youtube app, sadly 2x is as fast as it will go, but at least at 2x none of the above videos have any caption lag at all.

i just installed and tried the brave browser. it’s way better. it does have a bit of lag at 2x, but not so terrible as on chromium or firefox nightly.

so a cheap android 14 tablet beats a 24gb opensuse tumbleweed desktop. whats up with that? offhand i’ll guess it has something to do with scheduling delays for the thread handling the captions. and the dearth of similar complaints makes me think it’s likely not an issue on windows or mac.

i even relaunched chromium and didn’t open any other tabs. still terrible lag on nOEK5A967dk at 2x. the lag is typically klunky. one caption block may be on time, and the next terribly late.

5

Cannot reproduce here with any of your videos at 2x, whether with submitted or auto-generated captions.
Up to date Tumbleweed, so Firefox 140.0.2
HW not newer than yours, but Optimus+Nvidia if that matters.

CPU:
  Info: quad core Intel Core i7-4720HQ [MT MCP] speed (MHz): avg: 800
    min/max: 800/3600
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915
    v: kernel
  Device-2: NVIDIA GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M] driver: nvidia v: 570.169
6

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