Excessive Video Player Lag

[RABIDYOTE]

Using a supported version?

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates.
• I am using Signal-Desktop as provided by the Signal team, not a 3rd-party package.

Overall summary

Whenever I play a video I've sent or received in a chat, the video player itself starts freezing, stuttering, and/or buffering no matter the video length, size, or codec. It doesn't appear that the desktop application is using more resources than it should, and all other aspects work without issue.

Steps to reproduce

Play any sent or received video.

Expected result

The video player should remain stable and play videos without any kind of buffering or stutters.

Actual result

The video player begins to freeze, stutter, and/or buffer while a video is being played. The player GUI itself is also slow even while a video is paused, with button animations playing at about half-speed.

Screenshots

No response

Signal version

8.7.0

Operating system

Windows 11 24H2

Version of Signal on your phone

No response

Link to debug log

https://debuglogs.org/desktop/8.7.0/b8e0d7cfec6027e5a0dc775aff826d14846179979defeaa64cb39ae449063873.gz

[trevor-signal]

@RABIDYOTE thanks for the report. I'm unable to reproduce -- I wonder if there is something system-specific at play here. Does the problem reproduce for every video? Do you have any issues watching videos in Chrome?

[RABIDYOTE]

It does happen with every video I try, yes. And I don't personally use Chrome, but I can install Chromium when I get home and see if it happens then. I can also leave my system specs and a screen recording demonstrating the problem, if it helps.

[RABIDYOTE]

So I was finally able to sit down and test this. I got a recording, albeit an old-fashioned one through my phone since OBS won't record Signal (probably for good reason).

https://file.garden/ZpRi2iOun08fNEP8/IMG_5603.mp4

I also checked the same videos on Chrome (Chromium wasn't loading them for some reason) and they play smoothly with no UI lag. However, while I was testing this, I did find that disabling hardware acceleration in Signal through the --disable-gpu flag fixes the issue.

Here are my PC specifications for good measure:

Windows 11 Pro 24H2
AMD Ryzen 7 7700, 32GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 12GB VRAM