When doing coop runs, the timer on both sar and livesplit start as soon as the loading screen appears, however the game usually fades in when the timer is already at about 8 seconds. Is this supposed to happen or not? Here's an example of what I mean:

It may be because your co-op testing partner loaded into the game earlier than you did so the timer started because they were already in the cutscene while your game was still loading. So yes your timer starting early is supposed to happen.

Sorry forgot to say that this was fixed. The issue was that my partner's version of either sar or srconfigs was outdated and updating it fixed the issue.

This ostensibly still happens on the first load if blue has srconfigs, as the 'developer 1' setting from singleplayer is still set, which skips the cutscene.