Hardware encoding impossible for no apparent reason

[Faucon_Bleu]

Hello,
When I export video to Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, the software doesn't allow me to hardware encode in VBR 1-2 pass or CBR: either it's grayed out, or I get a message saying that the settings don't match.

However, the software installation is recent, and the CUDA hardware acceleration boxes are ticked for both decoding and encoding.

Software : Premiere Pro & Media Encoder 25.1
OS : Windows 11 Pro
Processor: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700KF 3.40 GHz
Installed RAM: 64.0 GB (63.8 GB usable)
System type: 64-bit operating system, x64 processor
Graphic Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3070 TI Gaming X Trio 8G

Can you help?

[Rach McIntire]

Hi @Faucon_Bleu,

I'm sorry to hear you're having issues.  Can you send a screenshot of the error message and what is grayed out?  Have you reset the preferences?  I hope we can help you soon. Sorry for the frustration! 

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi Faucon_Bleu,

Welcome to the community! Not all export configurations support hardware encoding. Please share a detailed screenshot of the export settings you have used. It will help us understand the issue and recommend the next steps.

Thanks,

Sumeet

[Faucon_Bleu]

It's under encoding options, performance, Hardware Encoding which is grayed out

[Faucon_Bleu]

Thanks @Sumeet Kumar Choubey !
Here are the parameters

[Ann Bens]

Raise the Level: that might do the trick.

[Faucon_Bleu]

I've tried raising it to the maximum, lowering it or not restricting it, but it doesn't change a thing 🤔

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Thanks for the details. Have you tried using any of the default H.264 presets like Match Source - High Bitrate to check if Hardware Encoding is working?

-Sumeet

[Faucon_Bleu]

Yes, but it reacts the same way. I've also tried other files with different codecs, but it does the same thing.
I've looked at the GPUSniffer file, but I don't see anything that would block as far as I know.

[RjL190365]

Is it possible that selecting "Maximum render quality" might have forced everything – encoding and rendering - into the software-only mode, using the CPU only (no GPU hardware acceleration at all)?

[Faucon_Bleu]

@RjL190365 Hardware encoding is blocked with or without Maximum Render Quality. I have the impression that no matter what the settings, hardware encoding remains blocked, as if the hardware were incompatible or poorly supported, even though the hardware is no more than 4 years old. I also updated the latest Nvidia Studio drivers when I saw that it wasn't working, but it doesn't change anything.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Thanks for providing the details. We will see if we can get it checked on a system with a similar configuration. Please provide a screenshot of the configuration of your Premiere Pro Media preferences.

-Sumeet

[Faucon_Bleu]

@R Neil Haugen Basically, I took a KF so as not to be bothered by a GPU processor used by default for certain applications or an OS that doesn't manage it properly.

@Sumeet Kumar Choubey 

Okay, thanks for following up.

I made screenshots of “general” and “media”, then also of the xxx concerning the hardware

console screenshot deleted by mod.

Edited due to Adobe policy prohibiting discussion of use of the engineer's console on their forums.

[Faucon_Bleu]

After some research and advice from some members of the community here, notably R Neil Haugen, whom I thank.
I have the answer: in order to activate hardware acceleration and use the graphics card GPU, the processor must also have a GPU, which is not the case for me. In Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, the graphics card GPU works with the processor GPU to hardware encode, whatever the codec.