Premiere 25.3.0 hardware encoding no longer available

[jandrewramsey]

Hardware encoding disappeared as an option on all exports from Premiere. I updated to the latest (25.0.4 Build 84) to try and solve it and no luck.

Windows 10

Nvidia 4080

I've been editing for 20 years. I'm not a newbie. I tried all the troubleshooting steps:

• Updated drivers
• Updated Premiere
• Cleared cache
• Trashed prefs
• Created new project, imported one of the sample media, tried to export at Adaptive High preset
• Tested a million different settings

All the same result: software encoding is either greyed out or if it's changeable, I get the "Hardware encoding is not available with these settings" error. I have hours and hours of footage I need to export. What am I missing? And why does this seem to happen every couple of years with this application?

[jandrewramsey]

Folowing up with a screenshot of the defauly adaptive preset not allowing hardware encoding as well as my specs. ME is absolutely hammering the CPU on these renders, GPU barely being touched, so it's not just a visual glitch.

 

 
Also wanted to clarify that this is not a framerate, bitrate, format or resolution issue as you can see from the screengrab and the many dozens of settings I've simplified/tweaked to get a different result. These are simple videos from the same projects I've been exporting for months that I suddenly cannot export using hardware encoding using the same settings I've been exporting at for years. This is a new issue that suddenly popped up without any changes on my end that I can think of. I only updated Premiere to try and fix it and I'm wishing these cuts were in a different application at this point.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello,

Have you tried a clean installation of the driver? This thread may provide some insight: https://adobe.ly/4l6Bt9g. Let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[jandrewramsey]

Thanks for the idea, Kevin. However, performed clean install of the latest studio drivers and got the same result.

Open to other ideas, guessing a clean install of Premiere is probably next on the list but that'll take a while.

[JonesVid]

Hi @jandrewramsey 

Worth looking at this rather long thread but look at my last post concerning a check to ensure Premiere Pro is selecting the NVidia GPU as priority.

Re: Premiere Pro 25.1 - iGPU stopped decoding my footage

Add GPUSniffer in the list too which forces the right GPU to be used.

See my attached screen snip. This is on Windows 11 24H2, but Windows 10 must also have similar selection.

In my post above you will also see I am using older Drivers. There has been a plethrora of driver releases for NVidia - lots to address 5000 Series Blackwell cards. How these affect cards like 4080 we don't know, but hopefully they get tested by NVidia !!!. Using latest drivers is not always the best, but it is generally the rule. If you have problems go back a couple of drivers to a known good one.

Finally what is the media you are using?.

You do know that from 25.0 to later releases Premiere Pro was re-written in how it handled H264 media.

I assume you have been following that?

Intel Quicksync (iGPU)  is not used as priority anymore if you have a powerful GPU like a NVIDIA 4080.

You can force Intel to be used by de-selecting NVidia decoding in Preferences / Media.

I'm using 25.2.3 at present and can confirm this uses Hardware decoding.

If you want to use Intel Quicksync with H264 (4-2-0) 8 bit  just deselect Nvidia decode as above.

[jandrewramsey]

Thanks for the tip but that did not change anything for me. Media doesn't matter as this problem persists regardless of the project or media. MXF, ProRes, RED, H264, doesn't matter. Premiere seems to think I don't have a good enough GPU to use for hardware encoding.