In the 416.16 release notes it stated “In the NVIDIA driver, Release 415 and later, the behavior of the Video Codec SDK API (NvEncCreateBitstreamBuffer) has been changed to return NV_ENC_ERR_UNIMPLEMENTED instead of NV_ENC_SUCCESS when the encoder instance is configured to run in the motion estimation-only mode.” For products like Cyberlink PowerDirector that utilized the H.264 Motion Estimation (ME) only Mode for GPU encoding, they now no longer have the encoding capability with this driver. The GPU encoding feature is disabled within PowerDirector, presumably from the documented change in NvEncCreateBitstreamBuffer behavior. Reverting back to the previous Nvidia driver reestablishes GPU encoding capability within PowerDirector.
Is this a permanent driver change going forward such that software like PowerDirector will no longer be able to utilize the GPU for encoding without modification being done by Cyberlink to address this change in Nvidia driver behavior?
Driver 416 doesn’t support for Video Codec SDK 4.0.
This was communicated through earlier driver release and Video Codec SDK 8.2 release as well.
Cyberlink would be required to move to latest NVENC APIs. We request customers to reach out to us directly video-sdk-feedback@nvidia.com so we can help with this transition if required.
Driver Release Notes
NVENC API 4.0
NVIDIA plans to discontinue support for the video encode (NVENC) API version 4.0 and earlier in a future driver release. This means that driver releases that have discontinued support will not work with applications developed using NVENC 4.0 or earlier. The specific driver release to discontinue support will be announced at a later date.
The NVENC API is part of the Video Codec SDK. NVIDIA recommends application developers who use the NVENC API to move to the latest version of the video encode API included with Video Codec SDK 8.0.