NVENC Not Detected by Filmora (RTX 3060 + Latest Drivers) — System NVENC Working but Application Fails to Load Encoder

Hello NVIDIA Team,

I am facing a strange NVENC-related issue and I need some technical guidance from NVIDIA engineers.


🔍 Issue Summary

NVENC works perfectly at the system level, but a specific application (Filmora video editor) is unable to detect any NVENC encoders.

The application only shows CPU-based encoders (H.264, HEVC, AV1), while H.264 (NVENC) and HEVC (NVENC) are missing.

I have confirmed that this is not a GPU, driver, OS, or NVENC API issue, because system-level tests confirm that NVENC is fully functional.

The suspicion is that the latest NVIDIA drivers (581.xx) may not be backward-compatible with Filmora’s older NVENC SDK integration.

I need help confirming this.


🖥 My System Specifications

Component Details
GPU NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
CPU Intel Core i7-14700K
RAM 64GB DDR5 (6000 MHz)
OS Windows 11 x64 (Fully Updated)
Driver Version 581.xx Studio Driver (Latest)
CUDA Version Installed with driver
Application Wondershare Filmora 15.0.14.16740
Installation Type Online installer

1. System-level NVENC Works (Confirmed)

nvidia-smi Output

GPU detected correctly with no errors.

ffmpeg -encoders | findstr nvenc

Output:

  • h264_nvenc

  • hevc_nvenc

  • av1_nvenc

All encoders available and working.

NVENC API DLLs present:

  • nvEncodeAPI64.dll

  • nvEncodeAPI.dll

  • nvcuda.dll

  • nvcuvid.dll

Everything is correctly installed in System32 and SysWOW64.


2. Application-level NVENC Fails (Filmora)

Inside the application’s Plugins folder, NVENC-related DLLs exist:

  • wp_nvEnc.dll

  • wp_nvEncV11.dll

But the UI does not show NVENC options:
❌ H.264 (NVIDIA NVENC)
❌ HEVC (NVIDIA NVENC)

Filmora support has confirmed:

  • They cannot provide older NVENC plugin files

  • They suspect compatibility issues with drivers

  • They are investigating


🧪 3. Tests Already Performed

I have already done:

✔ Clean uninstall + reinstall

Removed all:
Program Files, AppData/Local, AppData/Roaming, ProgramData.

✔ Older Filmora versions tested

Filmora 13/14/15 – same issue.

✔ GPU Acceleration enabled in settings

Filmora fails to load NVENC, even though OS sees it.

✔ NVIDIA Control Panel

Program added → Set to High Performance.

✔ Windows fully updated

Drivers also freshly installed.

✔ No hardware issues

NVENC works in:

  • FFmpeg

  • HandBrake

  • OBS Studio

  • Adobe Media Encoder
    All applications detect NVENC except Filmora.


🚩 4. Hypothesis

It appears that:

🔸 Filmora uses an older NVENC SDK

and

🔸 New NVIDIA drivers (580+ series) may have breaking changes

that block Filmora from initializing NVENC.

I need confirmation from NVIDIA whether:

Q1 — Did NVIDIA deprecate/modify any NVENC APIs in recent drivers (580+ series)?

Q2 — Is backward compatibility with older NVENC SDK versions affected?

Q3 — Should I downgrade to a specific driver version for full NVENC support?

If yes, please recommend a stable driver version compatible with older NVENC SDK.

Q4 — Does RTX 3060 require any additional dependencies for NVENC initialization in apps using older SDK builds?


🙏 5. What I Need from NVIDIA

  • Official confirmation about NVENC changes in recent drivers

  • Recommended driver version for older NVENC SDK applications

  • Any documentation on NVENC compatibility across driver updates

  • Whether Filmora needs to update their NVENC integration



Thank you very much to the NVIDIA engineering team for your time.
I look forward to your guidance so I can help the application vendor resolve this issue.

Best regards,
Rakesh Kumar Goutam

Welcome @rkgdumka to the NVIDIA developer forums.

NVIDIA GPU drivers are backwards compatible, that means unless explicitly stated, newer drivers still support older versions of the NVENC SDK. A quick look at the GPU driver changelog information did not reveal any deprecation of NVENC features in any of the 5xx drivers, so it is difficult to recommend a specific version to you.

It is rather the other way around that the SDK requires certain minimal driver versions. Depending on which SDK the app used to integrate the plugin, it will require a certain driver version. Also, NVENC itself might deprecate certain features between SDK version, see e.g. Deprecation Notices - NVIDIA Docs. Maybe the app used a new SDK version to compile the plugin, but did not take some deprecated APIs into account. Unlikely though since that should cause compilation issues.

Wondershare very likely has a contact within NVIDIA and I would expect them to use that already in case they can reproduce your problem.

For your case I would suggest to try rolling back the driver gradually, until you see it working. Then it might be possible to dig deeper, which changes might have affected how the app might use NVENC between those drivers.

Thanks!

Hey Markus. Same issues are happening in Vegas, Parsec, Sunshine and other applications (such as virtualdesktop from GuyGodin here: Drivers 591.44 broke NvEnc - GetEncodePresetConfig no longer works that had already adopted compatible practices previously and are adequate for current approaches (as they were announce since sdk10). There’s even a guide to reproduce issue on his post.

Welcome @dothuraka and thanks for the additional information!

Do you have more details regarding the other tools like Vegas? Some external link maybe?

Mandar on the other thread is the local expert, so I rather defer to him in this matter.

Some links may help, but I’m not actually a developer, so my knowledge is limited and while having this issue myself with parsec and sunshine, I’m currently lacking logs of parsec to provide. The last logs of the post on GitHub has same issue as mine, so I’ll put it here. Issue is reproducible only in 591.44, I’m using a 5000 series card, with cuda 13.1 and 12.9 installed.

And some reports on Reddit in 591.44 for VD, Parsec, and Vegas: Reddit - The heart of the internet

There is a bit more in the nvidia user forums but most are the same issue.

Do you mind talking with Mandar internally or should we cross-link/cross-reference here? Thanks :)