Kodi 20.5 on RPie5 - Videos won't play and CPU utilisation 100%

Troubleshooting
1

Fresh install of DietPi_RPi-ARMv8-Bookworm.img onto a new RPie 5 to SD card. I’m seeing the CPU utiisation go over 100% and the video freeze after about 5 seconds when I play a video file. Have tried multiple videos both on external USB HD and directly on the SD card so issue doesn’t see to be where the file is located.

Is anyone successfully playing videos on Kodi 20.5 (installed directly from Dietpi Software)?

I posted on the Kodi forum (https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=381250) but they just suggested I install LibreELEC. Would like to get it running on dietpi if I can.

  • DietPi version |
    Core=9
    Sub=11
    RC=2
    GITBRANCH=‘master’
    G_GITOWNER= ‘MichaIng’

  • Distro version
    Bookworm 0

  • Kernel version
    Linux Dietpi 6.6.74+rpt-rpi-2712 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.6.74-1+rpt1 (2025-01-27) aarch64 GNU/Linux

  • Architecture
    ARM64

  • SBC model
    RPie5

  • Power supply used - Genuine Rpie power supply

  • SD card used
    SanDisk ultra 256GB

Steps to reproduce

  1. Install image to SD card and boot
  2. Connect to wifi and update
  3. Install Kodi from dietpi software
  4. Open Kodi and scan for media
  5. Turn on debug log
  6. Play video file

Actual behaviour

Video freeze after around 5 seconds and CPU goes to > 100%

2

Did you try different files? Does it only appear with one specific file?

3

Rpi5 has very poor multimedia capabilities, it only has a HEVC decoder. H264 is decoded on the CPU. Can you paste your mediainfo?

4

Seems to be all files. Ive not yet found one that works and have tried avi, mpg, mkv. All behave the same.

5

Here are some that I have tried

6

Files 1 and 4 should be decoded with hardware acceleration and files 2 and 3 should be decoded on the CPU (software) with no problem.
Only the x265 files will be accelerated. So something is wrong. Can you change some output kodi options, for example enabled DRM PRIME?

And you are running over HDMI, right?

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