A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for synchronizing separate compressed video and text streams to provide lightweight closed captioning and instant messaging integration with video conferencing. A video encoder encodes a video stream and periodically generates a synchronization frame event. Each generated synchronization frame event has a unique ID. A text recording agent receives the periodically generated synchronization frame events, and generates text packets associating stored text with the synchronization frame event. A video decoder decodes the video stream, periodically generating the synchronization frame event having the unique ID. A text display agent receives the periodically generated synchronization frame events and associates stored text packets with the synchronization frame events.