h264/HEVC hardware accelerated encoding/decoding causes GPU to crash

[Abbottoklus]

Posting this to see if anyone else has had this issue, and to solve the mystery if you've been trying to fix it.

I got my hands on Zotac RTX 3080 last July, and while I reaped obvious benefits, it came with one huge, irritating drawback - Premiere and Media Encoder started crashing my GPU. There was a 50% chance my GPU would crash whenever I clicked/tabbed away from Premiere or AME during specific situations:
- loaded new footage
- waited for footage/thumbnails to process when opening an existing project
- sent a video to export
- started rendering an export

My PC would lock up for ~30 seconds, then the screen would go black, GPU would reboot and anything that was open and relied on GPU (Adobe apps, vimeo/youtube tabs, etc.) would need to be closed and restarted. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot it, changing various cache settings, reinstalling the apps and drivers, switching between studio and game drivers, tweaking GPU settings, etc. I was determined not to give up on my $1300 monstrosity and go back to my 1080, which never had any of these issues, and was now installed in my media server machine anyway.

But after months of this, I was ready to give up and RMA the damn thing. That's when I had one last realization, that the crash never occured when loading footage that wasn't h264/HEVC. So I disabled hardware accelerated h264/HEVC decoding/encoding and like magic, all my problems were solved. Hasn't been a single crash since, though it comes at the cost of slower exports and no longer being able to smoothly playback certain flavours of mp4, which unfortunately makes up about 80% of the footage clients send me.

If anyone else has dealt with this and found a way to leave hardware acceleration on please let me know. The only step I didn't try was a full system reformat. That's on the horizon in the next couple weeks when I upgrade to a 5900X so at that point I'll turn it back on and see how it goes.

System specs:
- Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Trinity OC (stock speed)
- Ryzen 3900X (stock speed)
- G.SKILL Trident Z Neo Series 64GB RAM
- Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite WiFi MB

[Andy 1968]

I have experienced the same things with an i9 9900K and RTX 2070 system using BRAW, Pro Res and R3D files. Having said that your system might have the same problem as mine (video below). Keep in mind we should be able to use Quick Sync and Nvenc. It would be nice if one of the programmers could respond

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyFu9vhOuHI&t=5s

[Abbottoklus]

I've noticed Premiere's increasingly worse issues with playback over the last couple years as well. Maddening to have some of the most recent and best rated hardware on the market but still feel like I had better performance at times on my 10 year old machine.

[Andy 1968]

The Adobe staff blew me off when I showed them the video! In fact they stated they did not see a problem! I am like WTF? At this point in time Adobe simply does not care about their products. They just want the money. 

[petrop]

Same Probleme here with a 3060ti. Fresh Windows Installation also doesnt help.

[petrop]

In my Work we have Nvidia 1xxx Cards an no Problems.

[petrop]

Have you install Win 10 or 11?

[Andy 1968]

I have Windows 10. I am hoping if I wipe and reload Windows everything will work OK but it might not work out that way. 

[petrop]

Damn it! I hoped the Problem is Windows 11. I installed 2 times Win clean and it not works.

I reduced the Bitrate of the Footage from 50mbit to 20 and it works better. Next Thing i try is h265 instead of h264.

I called Adobe and Nvidia support, both doesnt know about the Problem.. it sucks

Another Problem, with higher Version as 22.1.2 is a Memory Leak and 10% CPU usage, only when Premiere is open.

Maybe is time for a switch to Davinci Resolve...

[Andy 1968]

Petrop.

I am hip. I have made the switch myself. I still have Premiere Pro as part of the CC but in the year 2022 Adobe is nothing more than a bunch of idiots who have no clue what they are doing. Adobe's policy is go to the the Users Forum or make a feature request. I say BS! Have the programmers, CEO and Project Managers visits the forums a couple times a week. That is what the forums are for. People do not want to jump through extra hoops to be heard. That being said I hope to wipe and reload Windows this weekend. 

[Abbottoklus]

Yea I had zero issues with this on my 1080 as well. Sigh.

[petrop]

I talked with Adobe and Nvidia Support, they are not aware of the error. Maybe it is a Hardware Bug with some of the 30xx Cards... i dont know. I couldn't find anything on the web, only this Thread and One on Nvidia Forum, so i don´t think it can't be a general problem.

I think about, to contact my Hardware Dealer, and try to replace the Card.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi, petrop, 

Is this with 22.2 or 22.3? Have you tried the latest version? As Chris asks, have you tried the beta? A clean reinstallation of the latest drivers can sometimes help. What kind of footage are you editing with? Which camera are you using? Let us know. 

Thanks,
Kevin

[petrop]

I installed Windows 2 times Clean, so i doesnt think its a Problem with unclean System/Driver.

No, i haven´t tryed the beta yet.

This week i try my old AMD RX480, next Week i can try the Beta, with my RTX 3060 Ti.

Container: mp4, Codec: h264, Bitrate: i try different Bitrates, with 20mbit looks more stable but i also edited last week a Projekt with Videos with 20-80 mbit and no Problem. Footage come from a extern Employer. Filmed in 4k but he export the Footage in Davinci Resolve to 1080p.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey petrop,

The team discovered a bug in 22.3, so you may have to live with the previous version for now. Sorry about that.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Abbottoklus]

I forgot to say that I'm running Windows 10 and always have Adobe software running the lastest versions from day-of release, cause I'm a renegade like that.

[Andy 1968]

Abbottoklus,

Does your income as an editor come 100% from Premiere Pro? That being said I don't doubt your system works just fine but not everyone has been so lucky. 

[Abbottoklus]

No I use AE for about 25% of it as well. I also have a couple of contracted editors who use Adobe so I'm pretty locked in. Swithching to something like Resolve would cause a lot of downtime and be more trouble than it's worth for us if that's what you're hinting at lol.

I've tried learning Resolve on the side and unfortunately it also just doesn't work well for me. I have an ultrawide monitor and Resolve doesn't allow customizing the layout at all, and it just sucks and is super inefficient for my setup. If they ever actually implement a floating panel UI like they've been saying for years though I'll give it another shot.

[chrisw44157881]

does it crash with the beta version?

[Abbottoklus]

So with more experimentation I can so far say that it seems to be specifically about h264 decoding. With the update last week to 22.3 I noticed significant performance improvements all around, so I decided to turn hardware decoding/encoding again and see what happened.

Unfortunately it didn't take long to hit my first GPU crash, so I disabled decoding but left encoding on this time. So far so good, not a single crash in the last few days. I did encounter a new bug though where AME wouldn't save the settings, I had to manually edit the prefs file. If I end up getting a crash again I'll update here but given how many videos I output every day, I would pretty confidently say the problem exists specifically within my hardware decpdomg through my GPU.

[petrop]

Last Week the GPU of my Wife died, so i gave her my RTX 3060ti and i installed my old RX 480, for testing. I had one Drivercrash with the RX 480, but not more. RTX 3060ti Driver crashed multiple Time on the PC of my wife, when h264 decoding (with OBS) and Anydesk was in the same Time open, but without Anydesk no Problems.

Maybe its a Problem with multiple De-/Encoding with the 30xx Series? Has you somethin open, like anydesk teamviewer..., or try´d only Premiere without anything in the Background?

This Week, the 3060ti is back in my System and i try to avoid Premiere and Anydesk open at the same Time.

[petrop]

Nevermind, same Problem without Anydesk.

[petrop]

New Nvidia Driver is out, with a fixed Issue for Premiere.

[Adobe Premiere Pro]: DirectX related crashes with recent drivers.

[Abbottoklus]

Oh awesome I'll have to try it again now that they've added that fix. Fingers crossed.

And no I don't usually have anything like that running in the background either.

[petrop]

I have the same Problem with the new Driver.

I tryied to replicate the Problem on my Wifes PC (Win 10) with a R7 2700x and a RTX 3070 ti (GPU buyed for 2 Weeks). No Problems on her PC.