P: Premiere Pro Freeze During Export Using Hardware Encoding (NVIDIA RTX 5070)

[AL-Shami]

Hi Adobe Community,

I'm experiencing consistent freezes when exporting projects using CUDA acceleration with my new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070. This occurs in both Adobe Premiere Pro and Media Encoder.

Bug Report Details:

• Product(s) Affected:

  • Adobe Premiere Pro (25.2)

• Operating System: Windows 11 Pro

• GPU: ASUS Prime GeForce RTX™ 5070 OC Edition 12GB GDDR7

• GPU Driver: NVIDIA Studio Driver (Latest version available at the time of this report)
  

Issue Description:
Since upgrading to the ASUS RTX 5070, Adobe Premiere Pro freeze during export when CUDA acceleration is enabled. The application becomes completely unresponsive at a random percentage of export progress. No error message is displayed, and no crash logs seem to be generated. The application process cannot be terminated via Task Manager, forcing a full PC restart.

Project & Export Settings (Typical Scenario):

• Source Footage: H.265

• Sequence Resolution: 1080p

• Sequence Duration: Approximately 40 minutes

• Effects Used: Minimal (no heavy effects or LUTs)

• Preview Rendering: Not used

• Export Format: H.264

• Renderer: Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)

• Encoding: Hardware Encoding

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open a project in Premiere Pro (e.g., a 40-minute timeline with H.265 footage, simple edits, no heavy effects).
2. Go to File > Export > Media.
3. Set Export Format to H.264.
4. Ensure "Performance" is set to "Hardware Encoding."
5. Under Video > Encoding Settings (or similar, depending on version), ensure the Renderer is set to "Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA)."
6. Start the export (either directly from Premiere Pro or by queuing to Media Encoder).

Expected Result:
The export completes successfully（New RTX 5000 series now support 4:2:2 10bit H.265 natively）

Actual Result:
The application (Premiere Pro) freezes at a random point during the export. It becomes unresponsive, and the system requires a hard restart as the application cannot be closed via Task Manager.

Additional Notes:

• The problem is reproducible in both Premiere Pro direct export and Adobe Media Encoder.

• Switching to "Software Eng" rendering allows exports to complete, but this is not ideal.

I would appreciate any insights, troubleshooting steps, or guidance on whether this is a known compatibility issue. Please let me know if further information is required.

Thank you!

[Tsimdux]

Nevermind. My three hour export just froze up. Sorry for the false alarm. I really thought this would fix it, but I guess there's something else going on...

[Cameron39026970w4qk]

I reached out to Nvidia and they told me to update motherboard bios. I did that and it did not fix the issues. I then reinstalled windows...that also did not fix the issues. I'm going to lose my job because of this...

[R Neil Haugen]

A bunch of colorists i know had to reinstall their 3/4 series GPUs to get working. What a pain.

[MyerPj]

You can pickup a 4070 for reasonable amount, and sell it when the 5000 series is working for you. It's better than losing your job. 

[Cameron39026970w4qk]

That's currently what I'm considering. My only worry is returning usually comes with a restocking fee and it's only 30 days...what's the chances this will be fixed in the next 30 days?

[MyerPj]

Well, I wasn't thinking of that way. Just buy one and sell it when you are done. 🙂

[Cameron39026970w4qk]

Hello all! I decided to be the guinea pig and purchase another 50 series graphics card from my local Best Buy. The orignal card that I had that was not working was the Gigabyte 5090 ICE. This second card is the Gigabyte 5080 OC. I hae been using it all afternoon testing it in premiere and media encoder. It has not shown any signs of the freezing and locking up as the 5090 had. I have test 3 different projects and various type of renders, all using Hardware encoder and CUDA rendering. So far so good. This makes me wonder if Nvidia shipped out a large number of faulty cards? If this 5080 continues to work I'll be reachng out to Gigabyte about a fix for it as it is obviously still under warranty. 

[danm32376722]

Mine was the Zotac 5090 that didn't work. Interesting how some work and some don't.

[Abdullah_Almerbatti2838]

Hello There all.

I had similar issues with adobe softwares with my new PC that have the RTX 5070. 
I even had a much worse problem with audition, sepcificially the effect: Noise reduction (process) ! 
using that effect triggers chain of sluggihness and eventually caused my whole pc to have either white or black screen along with a weird peep sound. 

After spening hours and hours trying to fix it , I found the soloution with the help of Nivida help centre. 
I used a tool they provided called  "NVIDIA Cleanup Tool" which removes the driver completly from your device and then install the recent Studio  graphics driver. 

Please follow the steps in the attached screen shot of the email that i got from NVIDIA to do this process. 
I wish this will solve your problems too !

[FlyingFourFun]

There are faulty GPU' chips that nvidia has managfcatured,  but there is also a good chance that these 3rd party boards are building thiers differently and thus seeign different issues.  Power management on the board is the most likly, especialy these overclock versions of the cards.   If someone has one of these cards with issues, I wonder if they can try turning down the clock and memory speeds of them to factory OEM standard and see if there are any issues.    Does anyone with a founders edition card have any of these issues would be a good data point.

[SwanyPlaysGames]

I have a 5090 and tried all of these steps. I uninstalled all my drivers and did a fresh install of the Studio Drivers. Then my export froze about 30 seconds into exporting. Then the only way I can get Premiere Pro to close is to restart my PC. So This doesn't work. 

[Tsimdux]

@FlyingFourFun I have a 5090 FE and have all of these problems.

[FlyingFourFun]

@Tsimdux well that confirms its probably not over clocking.  I really wish I had a 5090 FE to test with right now...  I have time as I'm between projects, so it would be ideal.

[FlyingFourFun]

Microsoft seems to have put out a statement related to the May updates for stability:

Microsoft confirms Windows 11 24H2 stability issues, affecting games, tests performance fixes

some potentialy relevent text:

“This update addresses an issue observed in rare cases after installing the May 2025 security update and subsequent updates, causing devices to experience stability issues,” Microsoft noted in the document first spotted by Windows Latest.

It is worth noting that Microsoft won’t tell us what really caused performance issues, but if you were affected, your device would have become unresponsive and stopped responding in some cases. "

“Some devices became unresponsive and stopped responding in specific scenarios,” Microsoft added."

Microsoft is testing the fix for stability issues in Windows 11 KB5062660, which, as I noted above, is an optional release. This means the patch is not downloaded automatically, but you’ll get these fixes when Microsoft releases Windows 11’s August 2025 Patch Tuesday update on August 12, 2025."

Looks like the preview releases were available a few days,  maybe check your windows update history to see if this update was already applied, mine has been:

[Tsimdux]

@FlyingFourFun Yes, I installed that Windows update three days ago and it didn't help. There has been no change.

[Chen292594190kp1]

Stop fooling yourself and open your eyes — this is clearly a broken GPU, not some minor bug. The RTX 50 series is a complete mess for video editing, and it’s screwing over tons of users who bought it expecting reliable performance. It's been over two damn months, and neither Adobe nor NVIDIA has had the guts to say a single word — that silence says it all: they messed up big time.

There’s no magic fix coming. Stop waiting like a fool. Return the card. I don’t care if it’s been weeks or months — as long as it’s under warranty, send it back. Selling this kind of unstable hardware without warning is a joke. The RTX 50 series is a disaster for video work, and pretending otherwise is just lying to yourself.

[Cameron39026970w4qk]

So aggressive for no reason lol. That's why I sent my card to get fixed... 

[Leo Becker BR]

I’m having the same problem. I recently purchased an RTX5090, and I can't render videos using the GPU — it progresses to a certain point, then freezes, and I have to restart everything. I disabled GPU rendering and am using the CPU for now until I find a solution. I’ve updated everything, tried all possibilities, and nothing works, it’s definitely a problem.

[R Neil Haugen]

Yes, there's major problems with most all 5060/70/80/90 cards, but not just with Adobe apps ... with all the pro video apps.

Some cards work, but many don't. Many of the over-clocked ones from the maker have issues, but some others also. So it's unfortunate you got that card at this time. Sadly.

Very frustrating. It's been going on over a month, and Nvidia still doesn't have a fix.

[Leo Becker BR]

I tested with DaVinci Resolve and was able to export smoothly, without freezing. I just exported a 4K 60fps video over two hours long, and it ran perfectly on the GPU. That was the reason I needed to switch to it for good.

[MyerPj]

Yes, it is a bummer. However, I'm unclear if the problem exists on h.264/5 export only? Can an export be done successfully to say ProRes LT (or Proxy) or such. Then an h.264 from that, even using something like Shutter Encoder for the ProRes -> h.264.

[Leo Becker BR]

I tested exporting in several other formats, and it froze in all cases. The only way to export would be using the CPU. I did all the processes everyone mentioned here, and I'm an advanced user, I know exactly the bottlenecks and how to solve them, but nothing worked. Today a Beta update was released, I thought it might fix this, but not yet.

[MyerPj]

Thanks for the update @Leo Becker BR 

[ThioJoe]

I've had this issue with my 5090 FE as well. Media Encoder freezes then often times I can't end the process and have to reboot completely.

The workaround I've found to work (that doesn't require messing with my presets), is:

1. In Media Encoder go to Edit > Preferences > Media

2. Uncheck "H264/HEVC hardware accelerated decoding" and "H264/HEVC hardware encoding".

(It's possible it's only necessary to uncheck one or the other but I just unchecked both)

Obviously rendering takes longer but at least I know it works. It basically forces software rendering I think.

I'll also point out that the above will work even if I still have the Preferences > General  > "video rendering" option set to GPU Acceleration. So you don't need to switch that to software rendering. It also works even though the encoding preset I use is set to "Hardware Encoding", so I can keep using the one I usually do (it seems to automatically switch to software encoding when it goes to Media Encoder from Premiere).

[Tsimdux]

The newest Nvidia drivers (580.88) do NOT fix the issue, in case anyone was curious