Blackmagic Forum

updates notes say
- Hardware accelerated H.265 encodes on free version on Windows.

how does this work. I loaded the free version just to check but did not the the normal dropdown for native vs. nvidia like i thought I would

A couple of lines later they mention 265 for Intel. They might mean only with Quicksync. Do you have QS on your CPU?

h265 hardware encoding works on my Windows 10 Nvidia GTX 960, Resolve 17.4 Free. Just select H.265 as the codec. No other setting required.

With my low powered GPU I'm seeing a slight increase in FPS exporting compared to H.264 software encoding.

Thank you BMD.

On a timeline with no effects or CC, I'm seeing a 2 fold increase in export FPS over h264. Too bad I usually need to do some CC on the videos I edit.

I don't remember ever having native h.265 export, even in Studio, hardware encode only. Is this a Mac thing?

h265 rendering keeps on crashing for me. It always gets stuck in between and I can still cancel the render but the UI is mostly unresponsive. I can't seem to submit a bug report since most of the UI is unclickable so I can't submit an error log. Anyone else getting this?

It's happening on my latest Dell XPS 13 with Tiger Lake i7 CPU. Rendering out an h264 with old settings now to see if the issue also appears here.

/edit: Yes, rendering h264 is fine. Must be a bug that needs to be squashed with 265. I tried h265 .mp4 and .mov renderings, all failed.

Mario Kalogjera wrote:I don't remember ever having native h.265 export, even in Studio, hardware encode only. Is this a Mac thing?

Resolve on macOS does have non-HW-accelerated H265 export, yes. It's provided by the OS, and is therefore available in both free and Studio Resolve. Same for h264.

Hi guys, I am using the latest (Free) v17.4 of Resolve. I can't seem to export my clip to H265 at all. I keep getting this error message

Cannot find appropriate codec for encoding the video frame.

I have a laptop with the following:
AMD Ryzen 5900HX
Nvidia RTX 3080 16GB
Latest Nvidia Studio drivers installed.

I can Export to H264 just fine, and H265 hardware acceleration works perfectly fine with HandBrake. What am i doing wrong here?

AndyGalster wrote:h265 rendering keeps on crashing for me. It always gets stuck in between and I can still cancel the render but the UI is mostly unresponsive. I can't seem to submit a bug report since most of the UI is unclickable so I can't submit an error log. Anyone else getting this?

It's happening on my latest Dell XPS 13 with Tiger Lake i7 CPU. Rendering out an h264 with old settings now to see if the issue also appears here.

/edit: Yes, rendering h264 is fine. Must be a bug that needs to be squashed with 265. I tried h265 .mp4 and .mov renderings, all failed.

Most excited to have h.256 hardware accelerated rendering in the free version! But...it doesn't work! It starts rendering at much higher framerate than h.264 but doesn't complete the render.

I have the same problem like Andy's. Symptoms appear to be the same. h.264 rendering is OK but it's so much slower.

The h265 renderer seems to be stuck when it transits between cuts or clips. The playback head just gets stuck and the progress percentage and time remaining doesn't progress.

I can stop the render but the rest of the UI is unresponsive. I can quit Davinci Resolve but it prompts me to either continue the render or to stop and quit (which I have already did).

I tried rendering at a slower frame rate timeline (a 24 fps timeline seems have the greatest chance of success), but it's also a hit-and-miss. Sometimes it completes the render, but other times it doesn't.

So far all my source material is in h.264 from various cameras and video capture devices at 50 or 60 fps. None managed to reliably be rendered out in h.256. Quicktime, MP4 - nope...

The "crashed" output video file cannot be deleted in Windows until a system restart. It's basically a corrupted file.

Attaching the logs after the "crash" but generated after restarting Davinci Resolve. Hope it helps.

System specs:
Windows 10
i5-8400
AMD Radeon 5600XT with the latest drivers
32GB RAM
1TB nVME SSD

melvinpao wrote:Most excited to have h.256 hardware accelerated rendering in the free version! But...it doesn't work! It starts rendering at much higher framerate than h.264 but doesn't complete the render.

I have the same problem like Andy's. Symptoms appear to be the same. h.264 rendering is OK but it's so much slower.

The h265 renderer seems to be stuck when it transits between cuts or clips. The playback head just gets stuck and the progress percentage and time remaining doesn't progress.

I can stop the render but the rest of the UI is unresponsive. I can quit Davinci Resolve but it prompts me to either continue the render or to stop and quit (which I have already did).

I tried rendering at a slower frame rate timeline (a 24 fps timeline seems have the greatest chance of success), but it's also a hit-and-miss. Sometimes it completes the render, but other times it doesn't.

So far all my source material is in h.264 from various cameras and video capture devices at 50 or 60 fps. None managed to reliably be rendered out in h.256. Quicktime, MP4 - nope...

The "crashed" output video file cannot be deleted in Windows until a system restart. It's basically a corrupted file.

Yes, that's exactly what I got. FYI, the corrupted file can be deleted once Davinci is closed properly. You have to close the Davinci task via the taskmanager.

I am most happy to post that with the 17.4.1 release, the hardware-accelerated h.265 rendering on Windows works!

I have tested with two projects that have previously failed to render (fully) on the 17.4 release, and with 17.4.1 it renders fully, with much increased speed (avg. 120 fps on the h.265 vs avg. 25 fps on the h.264 for the best case). I have not done extensive testing, but at least there is a sense of reliability here.

Kudos to all at BMD for giving the community such a great tool. I'm just an amateur/hobby videographer/editor, so it's not justified to pay for the Studio version. I really appreciate this wonderful tool. Thank you!

H265 export is still broken for me in 17.4.1 with exactly the same error message i got with 17.4