Media Encoder freezes with CUDA on RTX 5070 – works fine with OpenCL

[Esmerling2713315248pl]

Bug Report – Freeze When Exporting with CUDA (RTX 5070)

Product: Adobe Media Encoder
Version: 25.2
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Current GPU: NVIDIA PNY RTX 5070 12GB
Current Driver: Studio version (latest available at the time of this report)
Previous GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super (Gigabyte) – worked flawlessly

Issue Description:
Since upgrading to a PNY RTX 5070, Adobe Media Encoder freezes during export when using CUDA acceleration. The issue also occurs when exporting directly from Premiere Pro. There is no error message; the application just becomes unresponsive at a random percentage of progress.

Project Details:

• Resolution: 1080p

• Duration: 40 minutes

• Export Format: H.264

• No heavy effects or LUTs used

• No preview rendering used

• Exporting with OpenCL works, but it's noticeably slower

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open a 40-minute project in Premiere Pro (simple timeline, no heavy effects).

2. Send to Media Encoder.

3. Set export format to H.264.

4. Ensure CUDA is selected as renderer.

5. Start export.

6. Encoder freezes at a random progress percentage (no crash, just hangs).

Additional Notes:
This problem started only after switching from an RTX 4070 Super to an RTX 5070 and updating to the recommended Studio driver. This strongly suggests a compatibility issue between Adobe's CUDA integration and NVIDIA's RTX 50 Series cards.

Please investigate this issue or provide compatibility guidance.

[Exuberant_Essence1448]

same

[Digit_Mihael]

Same issue, 3060 worked great, now with 5070 I can't export anymore. No crash logs, no trace, nothing. It just stops. Also, sometimes I can't even end process (Premiere) and I have to restart my PC.

[AL-Shami]

Same issue, with 5070 I can't export anymore H.264 videos using Hardware Encoding in both Premiere and Media Encoder. No crash logs, no trace, nothing. It just stops. Also, I can't even end process (Premiere) from task manager and I have to restart my PC.

[mauriced36878288]

Sane issue here! Switched from a 2070 to a 5080, tried diffrent drivers and encoding settings - only workaround is to disable H264 En- and Decoding completely and switch to CPU Rendering with significant performance drops ... please investigate this issue

[schwarzlicht]

Same with 5080

[Daniel31572930sqvu]

same issue here - incredibly frustrating.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi everyone,

We're sorry about the poor experience. Could you please confirm the version of NVIDIA driver installed on your system? Also, is this happening specifically with H.264 exports? Are you able to export in other formats, like QuickTime > Apple ProRes?

Thanks,

Sumeet

[Digit_Mihael]

Hi Sumeet,

Thanks for the follow-up.

- Apple ProRes export works fine.
- H.264 and H.265 exports don’t work – Premiere freezes during export.
- FFmpeg Encoding Test using H.264 and H.265 via NVENC runs without any issues.

I’ve tried all the compatible drivers for the 50 series GPUs, but the issue persists across them.

[schwarzlicht]

The export to other formats seems to work. An export to h264 in a Quicktime container has also succeeded.
However, exporting to a Quicktime container takes twice as long as h264 in an MP4 container.

What doesn’t work at all is exporting a PNG sequence to h264. It freezes after just a few seconds. My old slow computer with a 3080 handles that without any problems.

I can output the PNG sequence to ProRes and then output that (7 minutes on the timeline) to h264, without the encoder freezing. However, this is considerably more complicated and takes longer than a simple export on my old cheap notebook.

[schwarzlicht]

PS.
Nvidia Studio Driver 576.52

[crasso]

Same here. I can provide dump file if necessary.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi everyone, 

Does it export properly if you disable H264/HEVC hardware accelerated encoding under Edit > preferences > Media while keeping Renderer set to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)?

Thanks,

Sumeet

[eckiAMETeam]

Asking our friends over at the Formats team.

[Fergus H · Accepted solution]

Hi all, 

Thanks very much for the reports of this issue. We are investigating this problem with the highest level of priority. I am going to lock this thread, because we are tracking the same issue in this thread in the Premiere Pro forum: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/premiere-pro-freeze-during-export-using-hardware-en.... 

As you probably know, Premiere Pro and Media Encoder share the same technology for exporting video so we are consolidating discussion about this issue in the existing Premiere Pro thread. 

Regards,

Fergus