Media Encoder fails to hardware decode Sony XAVC S (H.264 4:2:2 10-bit) on RTX 5070 Ti / Blackwell architecture

Hi everyone,

I'm facing a ridiculous issue with Adobe Media Encoder where it completely refuses to use GPU Hardware Decoding for Sony footage, even though the new RTX 50-series hardware natively supports it.

My Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

• Driver: NVIDIA Studio Driver 610.62 (Latest)

• OS: Windows 11

The Problem: When exporting or creating proxies from Sony A7V source files recorded in XAVC S 4K 50fps (H.264 / AVC, High 4:2:2 Profile, 10-bit), Premiere Pro handles the footage fine, but Media Encoder completely drops GPU Decoding.

Inside Media Encoder, Encoding is done via NVIDIA NVENC (GPU), but Decoding defaults entirely to the CPU.

What I've tried:

1. Hardware Decoding for H.264/HEVC and NVIDIA is explicitly checked in Preferences -> Media.

2. Renderer is set to Mercury Playback Engine (CUDA).

3. If I drop the XAVC S file directly into Media Encoder (bypassing Dynamic Link), it still ignores NVDEC.

4. If I force-disable software decoding in the Console (DVAFM.Block_H264_SW_Codec -> true), Media Encoder instantly crashes with the following error: Frame substitution recursion attempt aborting after multiple attempts... Inserting black for frame number 0.

It is clear that Media Encoder's import module does not yet recognize the High10 / High422 NVDEC capabilities of the new Blackwell (RTX 50xx) architecture for XAVC S files, forcing software decoding on a GPU that is fully capable of handling it natively.

Adobe, please fix this. We pay a premium subscription and buy top-tier hardware just to be held back by outdated software optimization.

Has anyone found a workaround for this specific Blackwell/Media Encoder bug with Sony XAVC S footage?