Kodi 22 Beta Ships With FFmpeg 8.1, Rewritten Linux Rendering, and Long-Requested Audio Fixes
Kodi has been the backbone of DIY home theaters for nearly two decades, and the project shows no signs of slowing down. The latest beta release — codenamed “Piers” — brings together months of under-the-hood work that should matter to anyone running a media server on a Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, or a dedicated HTPC.
IT-NEWS, June 30 — Kodi 22 has officially entered beta, signaling that the major features are locked in and the team is now focused on stability and performance. The release candidate should follow in the coming weeks.
The headline upgrade under the hood is FFmpeg 8.1. The new video engine brings real-time bitrate info tags, improved chapter handling, and smarter bookmarks that integrate with fast-forward and rewind logic. The update also fixes AV1 playback issues that cropped up when keyframe filtering was enabled — a welcome patch for anyone testing the waters with AV1 content.
On the audio side, Kodi 22 resolves two long-standing headaches: a crash that could occur during DTS-HD playback, and an audio delay problem tied to AC3 and EAC3 passthrough on live TV streams. Neither made headlines, but both have been regular complaints in the Kodi forums for years.
Subtitles get meaningful attention too. The beta improves visibility and timing synchronization, cleans up ASS and SSA script header handling, and adds the ability to display the current video’s subtitle codec directly in the UI — a small detail that makes debugging format issues much faster.
The media library now includes a new “Media Details” dialog that surfaces audio language info directly in media entry badges, along with broader HDR format display across the interface.
The biggest changes, though, are on Linux. Kodi 22 rewrites the rendering path for embedded platforms running DRM, GBM, and GLES. After this update, GLES finally matches GL’s feature coverage — supporting hardware decoding, chroma info handling, tone mapping for the UI, and 10-bit output. End-to-end HDR support on embedded Linux is now fully operational, which matters most to Raspberry Pi and ARM-based media center users who have been stuck with limited GLES support for years.
Cross-platform users will note that remote database compatibility now extends to MySQL 9.6 and newer, as well as MariaDB 10.x. The beta also fixes a crash that could occur when the MySQL server was temporarily unreachable — a scenario common enough on home networks with spotty NAS connections that it’s surprising it took this long to fix.
Kodi 22 is available now for testing on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. A stable release is expected later this summer.