Critical NVENC Hardware Encoding Failure on HEVC (H.265) in Premiere / Media Encoder (v25.2 – v25.5 & Driver v616.92)

[Bug Report] Critical NVENC Hardware Encoding Failure on HEVC (H.265) in Premiere / Media Encoder (v25.2 – v25.5 & Driver v616.92)

Test Environment & System Specifications:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

• RAM: 64GB DDR5 (6000MHz)

• OS: Windows 10 Pro (Version 22H2 / Build 19045.7725)

Issue Summary: The HEVC (H.265) export performance in Media Encoder has degraded severely. Through systematic version testing, I identified that Media Encoder 2025 releases (v25.2, v25.3, v25.4, v25.4.1, and v25.5) completely dropped NVENC Hardware Encoding support for the HEVC (H.265) codec, while legacy 2023 (v23.6.9) and early 2025 builds (v25.0, v25.1) retained functionality under older drivers.

Furthermore, updating to NVIDIA Driver v616.92 breaks NVENC hardware acceleration across all versions, leaving users completely without GPU-accelerated HEVC exports. This critical feature regression has remained unaddressed and broken for nearly a full year.

Key Observations & Video Evidence:

1. Core Cause of HEVC Slowdown: Media Encoder versions 25.2 through 25.5 fail to utilize NVENC hardware encoding specifically for HEVC (H.265), forcing software encoding and causing extreme export slowdowns compared to earlier versions (v25.0, v25.1, and 2023 v23.6.9).

2. UI False Positive: Even though "Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)" is selected in the UI, export workflows bypass the NVENC pipeline entirely.

3. Forced CPU Software Fallback: Task Manager shows GPU Video Encode engine usage locked at 0% during HEVC exports (the ~13% GPU load shown in the test video is strictly consumed by OBS screen recording).

4. Driver Version Breakage (v581.57 vs v616.92):

   • Driver v581.57 + Legacy ME v23.6.9 (NVENC Working): 10 min 26 sec

   • Driver v616.92 + ME v26.3.2 / v27.0 Beta (NVENC Broken): 31~32 min (over 3x slower)

5. Long-Standing Issue: This HEVC hardware acceleration regression has persisted for nearly a year across continuous v25.x updates, severely disrupting professional workflows.

Urgent Request: I strongly urge both the Adobe and NVIDIA engineering teams to prioritize and resolve this long-standing HEVC hardware encoding failure. Please release an official compatibility fix before Windows 10 reaches its official end-of-support date.

Demonstration Video Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1adN8Jronws_o4fnQ6_batbzUf_Xl1TlH?usp=drive_link