Description of the issue:
On youtube videos, if i skip through the video my cpu usage skyrockets. With the screenshot I took brave alone is taking 56.4% of cpu with the brave task manager saying 953 for cpu usage in the isolated tab I pulled up to test. What makes it more weird is I don’t know for sure if every video has the same results but it is easily repeatable by just spamming the left and right arrow keys. It was doing the same by just slowly tapping right though which is how I found the issue. Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.
As stated above, tap the left and right arrows on a youtube video. Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
Expected result:
As stated above. Reproduces how often:
Works every time on this video.
Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):
windoes 11 most recent brave version Additional Information:
What specific version of Brave are you using? I know you said “most recent,” but there have been miscommunication on that before. So please share the specific version, such as “1.68.121” or whatever you’re using.
Does it happen with Shields off?
Do you have Graphics Acceleration on or off? And if you toggle to the reverse, does it perform better? If you’re unaware, Graphics Acceleration toggle is at brave://settings/system and ideally it should be on in most situations
Does this happen if you open in a private window? (I’m guessing so as I see label says Private Tab on it, but just want to confirm
Can you test in a new browser profile? Create this second browser profile by going to the hamburger menu, which looks like → More Tools → Add new profile Then use this second profile you created without adding any extensions or changing settings. Does the same issue occur?
As the screenshot shows, is was tested in a private window
I just made the browser profile since I just started using the browser so if I need to make a new profile every other day then there’s no point in using the browser.
Also before you ask I have zero extensions and have tested on another browser and had no issues on the other browser. I have a R9 3900x and a 2080ti which chew through everything else with no issues, brave is the only thing I run that has an issue.
Well I did try with it off and it did not help. This issue is getting more strange as I keep looking into it though. In some videos, it is going to happen every time while in others it is not an issue I am able to recreate. Every video is using the same quality settings and I am checking different video lengths as well and for sanity’s sake different parts of the videos to see if the exact areas are to blame(it is the whole video for ones that do it). This has gone from what I thought was an annoyance from a new browser to a weird issue potentially on youtubes end. I did try on yet another browser(non-chromium) and was able to recreate it so I’m at a loss for words on what could be causing this because it is so inconsistent.
I’m at the time going to assume there is a weird driver issue or possibly a weird windows issue with the current update I have installed since windows likes to make everything weird at one point or another. If I have any notable info I’ll check in again.
Go to brave://gpu and then see if most of the options on top are green, rather than red. If they are mostly red, then there’s an issue with Brave using your graphics driver.
The first thing to look for in that case would be to check if there is an updated driver for your graphics card. Get it from the official website, whether AMD, Nvidia, or Intel. If you find one that works, then check brave://gpu again.
If there is no newer driver that would work on your system, and you don’t mind risking breakage, you could try going to brave://flags and enable “Override software rendering list.” Restart Brave, and assuming it starts, check brave://gpu again to see if it did anything. If not, disable that flag, as it won’t help.
If Brave won’t open, you’ll need to type brave.exe --disable gpu into your start menu or taskbar search, which will allow you to launch Brave and then disable the flag. Then Brave should start normally after that.
I checked the brave gpu settings and that should be green were green from the look of things. This is kind of a strange issue all around.
Certain videos are guaranteed to remake the issue when skipping through the video but other videos do not recreate the issue in the slightest. On firefox, those same videos do the same issue but not as badly on firefox. On edge, the issue doesn’t happen at all. I’m testing with all the same tabs open on each browser, with firefox being the only one that has any extensions enabled.
I have tried testing with different videos from the same channels I have found the issue, but it is inconsistent within channels as well. It is only specific videos that have the issue, but as I said the ones that do have an issue are always having an issue.
I updated drivers and did have a windows update to install but they did not help the issue. I did decide to try out some other chromium browsers and it seems that brave is the only chromium browser with the issue.
I can only assume that firefox did have a minor version of the issue because it’s not as efficient with resources as chromium tends to be. I also did look into extensions to force youtube to use another encoder to force gpu acceration and while it did stop cpu spikes when skipping through the video, it immediately maxed out gpu usage when skipping through.
So while I do enjoy what brave has to offer otherwise, it is the only browser with this specific issue(firefox only being a general inefficiency issue) and I don’t wanna strain my pc more than gaming or code compilation simply from skipping ahead on a youtube video.
I just wanted to leave this last comment here for anyone else who has weird cpu usage issues from brave specifically. I hope there is a fix since I do see many other posts about cpu usage on youtube, but I do understand that there are many who also do not have this issue. I’ll just be trying out other options in the meantime.
So I have come back to attempt to find the issue and have found the possible issue. Every video with av01 codec will repeat the issue, but any video with vp09 does not repeat the issue.
I tried updating to see if I was able to fix it that way, but that was not a fix sadly. It is till only brave that has this issue with videos using av01, and as before with a fresh install, when I skip through a youtube video my cpu usage spikes while doing so if the video is using av01.
I did find another post about av1 not working correctly in brave for others after I found this to be the issue and am still looking for a solution. Will once again update if I find any more info.
Well it’s not much of a fix but using the extension “enhanced-h264ify” allows you to block specific codecs from being used. After adding that and restarting brave, every video I’ve tested so far sticks to the vp09 codec and does not recreate the issue.
I say it’s not much of a fix because there seems to have been an update before I started using brave, that broke av1 interaction for some(assuming their cpu usage issue from only youtube was the same) that were not able to find an answer, with one post here specifically calling out the codec issue after an update.
I really hope that this specific issue can be pushed to those who need to see it, since there seems to be enough people that have made posts about youtube causing cpu issues with brave. I’d hate to imagine the amount of people who try brave without knowing much about reaching out and researching for help for something like this.
To clarify one last time, this issue is only with brave, where skipping through a video using av1 will take excessive cpu power(spiking my cpu usage up to 90% just for a youtube video). Maybe it is a specific compatibility issue with how brave uses some hardware, I don’t know. All I know is that there is enough of a consistent issue within forum posts that I hope would warrant an investigation for a fix.
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