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!

[Cunningcory]

@FlyingFourFun I'm still not home to check. I saw the patch notes for the Game Ready driver posted on the Nvidia subreddit and those notes for the Game Ready driver said it had fixed the Adobe issues, so I assumed the driver was released and that it should fix the issue. It didn't say anything about the fix only being from the Studio driver.

[FlyingFourFun]

@Cunningcory Ahh, it is making sense now,  studio ready driver download is not available yet - so if your using the game ready one, it might fix the issues I guess...  but if you didnt know that the studio driver update has not been made available, you may be expecting it to work.....

I'll try and keep an eye on it, and post back if I catch its available before anyone else does.

I have been testing with the Sept 10th Driver on a 5090FE cards I got a few days ago with no issues, so I have not been able to run into this bug even with the Sept 10th driver - so not sure I will be able to confirm if its solved in the Sept 30 version - hopefully I dont have to report that new bugs were introduced!

[Harley5E53]

Yo @pkirst NVIDIA, it's 9/30 today and we are seeing the new Gaming Driver, but not the Studio Driver. Is your team still working on it?

[Cunningcory]

Using Game Ready Driver 581.42 released September 30th, I was able to export a three hour 4K video in less than 30 minutes without it freezing up (with Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling enabled) in Adobe Media Encoder. The issue appears to be fixed, although that's only one test so far. Did the rest of you who were still having problems update to this driver or the older studio driver? The game ready driver released today SEEMS to be working.

[Harley5E53]

My issue is the DJI 4K footage preview freezes on timeline. The other thread confirmed that this is due to the same NVIDIA driver issue

[Hoczo]

@FlyingFourFun 

Game Ready Driver: 581.42 – in the changelog for this NVIDIA driver version, it states that the following issue has been fixed:

Fixed General Bugs

Adobe After Effects / Premiere Pro: crash on launch when Smooth Motion is enabled globally [5515256]

Adobe Premiere Pro: Some system configurations can freeze during export using hardware encoding [5431822]

When Video Noise Reduction is enabled, the chroma appears grayscale [5401959]

[Hoczo]

@Cunningcory 

For us, only one render completed successfully on the Game Ready Driver: 581.42 — the subsequent renders kept freezing.

[Daniel31572930sqvu]

I'm guessing they're fully aware the GPU rendering isn't fixed yet hence why the Studio driver still hasn't been released yet, even after Jamie said it'll be out on the 30th, AM.

Hopefully the wait will be worth it and we'll be able to use our expensive graphics cards we all purchased, some of us, 6 months later.

[pkirst]

NVIDIA posted Game Ready Driver, 581.42 yesterday that includes all the required fixes for this issue. It is available here for desktop users : https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/257133/

Due to a recent plan of release change, we did not post a updated Studio Driver yesterday, the next Studio Driver to now pick up all the required fixes will be on Oct 14th. 

Please let me know if you have any further questions. 

[Daniel31572930sqvu]

A few people above have stated the GRD hasn't fixed the memory leak issue whilst exporting with CUDA renderer so I don't want to waste my time trying it only to roll back again.

Oct 14th? Great. Only another 2 weeks to waste and have to explain to clients, after we were promised for a 30th September fix. I won't hold any hope. Very, very disappointed, Nvidia.

[Chen29275455tonq]

Nvidia really screwed up this time. Our media classroom has 32 brand-new computers running Windows 10, and it’s already been 4 months. I contacted the Nvidia distributor, and they agreed that if the driver update on the 30th doesn’t work, we’ll return everything. Now they’ve pushed the date back again to the 14th. They’ve been hiding the truth, including the black screen issues with the 50-series GPUs. It’s obvious these are hardware defects in the GPUs. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s stock price keeps hitting new highs, and the engineers are cashing out and partying instead of doing their jobs properly

[Profanity removed by moderator]

[Radman10]

Exactly . 

[FlyingFourFun]

@pkirst this is really uncomfortable for everyone now that the driver is delayed another 2 weeks, and the game ready driver is already seeing reports of not correcting the issue.  I could have delayed installing the 5090FE I just recieved for 2 more weeks had I know this information.   I have already sold off the 3090 I had - so I am just praying that now the 5090 works well enough.   

If the code is ready, why cant nvidia just realease a hotfix for us?  This would be a welcome move I think by many.  However If the Game Ready driver is said to include the fix, and reports and saying it doesnt fix it - I guess a hot fix may not actualy be available anyway.

I really hope the Nvidia/Adobe team actualy and truly fix this.  It would be nice for some additional transpency on exactly what is, and the manner in which, it is failing so maybe we can find a workaround in the mean time.

[R Neil Haugen]

Your points are well taken, but one clarification ... this is not an Adobe specific issue. It is happening across all the video post apps. It's Nvidia's mess, totally and completely.

[Martin Bowman]

I can confirm that encoding 4K on an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB with the latest 581.42 Game Ready Driver still crashes every single time, leaving the video file corrupted. This problem has been dragging on for months, and your users are still waiting for a proper fix. Yet you’re more than happy to keep taking people’s money and pushing out 50-series cards while the drivers remain broken. How about focusing on releasing a stable, working driver instead of making loyal customers wait endlessly?

[Martin Bowman]

Just to clarify, my previous message was directed at NVIDIA, not Adobe. The fault here lies entirely with NVIDIA.

[Cunningcory]

Just a heads up to everyone...

Nvidia says the fixes are IN the Game Ready driver and the Studio driver is delayed for other reasons. That means if the Game Ready driver does not fix the issue, then the Studio driver releasing in two weeks also will NOT fix the issue. I would advise everyone to test the Game Ready driver to confirm it isn't a fix so that maybe they can tweak it before the Studio driver releases. I've only tested once so far, but my encoding was successful. It sounds like if I kept testing, however, the issue would come back...

[nay27480563dcex]

I'm having issues rendering videos, both when exporting through Premiere and through Media Encoder.

I recently updated my gpu card and now i'm having some trouble when rendering with CUDA in Premiere.

The video starts rendering normally, but after a random amount of time, it just stops and freezes the encoding time forever. But see, the program itself doesn't freeze or crash, just the rendering, and the time freezes forever. (I've tried sleeping and letting it rendering to see if it was just taking too long, but it actually freezes the timing and the process.)

I tried uninstalling premiere, tried using different versions of premiere, tried to update my drivers, tried gaming nvidia and studio driver, and nothing changed.
Also, I have a little suspicious that it can be either HD or RAM, but I'm not sure. 
It's a really strange bug, and I don't even know where or what to look for, to fix this problem. 

My specs - 
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 WINDFORCE OC 8G
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 
RAM DDR4 32 GB
HD SATA 6 TOSHIBA 1 TB 
SSD SATA 6 240 GB

[R Neil Haugen]

Nearly the entire Nvidia "50" series GPUs have issues, across all video post apps, and the Nvidia rep that came onto this forum back in mid-September said they'd have a Studio driver out on September 30th that would fix things.

They only released a gaming driver, not a Studio one, on the 30th, and it works for at least a few but not nearly all users.

And now they've said the release for the Studio driver to fix the problems will be around October 14, another couple weeks.