# Tavus avatar taking time to initialize (\>10s of black out) **URL:** \ **Category:** Agents\ **Tags:** agent-development, realtime, avatar\ **Created:** [February 26, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://community.livekit.io/t/tavus-avatar-taking-time-to-initialize-10s-of-black-out/402 "2026-02-26T19:07:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AI\_Arjun](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.livekit.io/ai_arjun/32/241_2.png) [@AI\_Arjun](https://community.livekit.io/u/AI_Arjun)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://community.livekit.io/t/tavus-avatar-taking-time-to-initialize-10s-of-black-out/402/1 "2026-02-26T19:07:45Z")
So I have been trying to integrate Tavus realtime avatar for a project and there seems to a long delay before the agent starts speaking. If we look at the video feed, its black for around 13 sec after which the avatar video is really up and speaks. Would love to know if anyone else has faced similar issue. ---
**Author:** ![darryncampbell](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.livekit.io/darryncampbell/32/20_2.png) [@darryncampbell](https://community.livekit.io/u/darryncampbell)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 9:20am UTC](https://community.livekit.io/t/tavus-avatar-taking-time-to-initialize-10s-of-black-out/402/2 "2026-02-27T09:20:12Z")
13 seconds is very long - I gave this a test and see around half that with the following setup: - [GitHub - livekit-examples/agent-starter-python: A complete voice AI starter for LiveKit Agents with Python.](https://github.com/livekit-examples/agent-starter-python) modified to use the Tavus avatar and run with `uv run … dev` (it would have been quicker if I had deployed the agent to LiveKit cloud rather than locally through `dev`) - Front end: Agent playground We also have a dedicated example for Tavus: [https://github.com/livekit-examples/python-agents-examples/tree/main/complex-agents/avatars/tavus](https://github.com/livekit-examples/python-agents-examples/tree/main/complex-agents/avatars/tavus) with its own front end ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Arjun](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.livekit.io/ai_arjun/32/241_2.png) [@AI\_Arjun](https://community.livekit.io/u/AI_Arjun)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 10:22am UTC](https://community.livekit.io/t/tavus-avatar-taking-time-to-initialize-10s-of-black-out/402/3 "2026-02-27T10:22:48Z")
Got it…i was also playing around with other providers. Tried liveavatar with the same setup and did a latency benchmark wrt to the avatar silence 5 sessions : Tavus - 11.56sec avg Liveavatar - 2.56sec avg ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Arjun](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.livekit.io/ai_arjun/32/241_2.png) [@AI\_Arjun](https://community.livekit.io/u/AI_Arjun)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 10:23am UTC](https://community.livekit.io/t/tavus-avatar-taking-time-to-initialize-10s-of-black-out/402/4 "2026-02-27T10:23:31Z")
I will also try the above tavus repo to verify things. Thanks @darryncampbell ---
**Author:** ![darryncampbell](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.livekit.io/darryncampbell/32/20_2.png) [@darryncampbell](https://community.livekit.io/u/darryncampbell)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 10:30am UTC](https://community.livekit.io/t/tavus-avatar-taking-time-to-initialize-10s-of-black-out/402/5 "2026-02-27T10:30:01Z")
Thanks, we see more and more requests for benchmarks (specifically for LLM, STT, TTS) but I’ll raise that avatar benchmarks would also be beneficial; I’m sure others are in the same position as you and looking for this info.