NVEnc 9.32

NVEnc is a free encoder that hands your video to the dedicated encoding chip built into NVIDIA graphics cards.

Two things share almost the same name here, and the difference matters.

NVENC in capitals is the hardware, while NVEnc, by the developer rigaya, is the free program that drives it.

What NVEnc Actually Is

Every modern NVIDIA card carries a small block of silicon that does nothing but encode video. It is separate from the part that renders games, which is why encoding on it costs you almost no frame rate.

NVENC is that block. It has been there since the GTX 600 series, and NVIDIA improves it every couple of generations.

NVEnc is what you actually download. It is a free, open-source program that talks to that chip, handles your input files, applies filters, and muxes the result. It runs from a command line rather than a window, which is the main thing to know before you click.

It runs on Windows and Linux, and it ships an AviUtl2 plugin for people already working in that editor.

Hardware or Software Encoding?

This is the question worth getting right, because the honest answer is not the one most pages give you.

That trade is overwhelmingly worth it in some situations and clearly wrong in others. Use NVEnc when the encode has to finish soon, when you are recording or streaming live, or when you have a large batch and the CPU is needed elsewhere.

Use a software encoder like x265 or x264 when the file is going into an archive, when you are squeezing a release down to a target size, or when quality per megabyte is the whole point.

The gap has narrowed a lot since the early NVENC generations, and on recent cards it is smaller than most people assume. It has not closed.

Which Codecs Your Card Can Handle

This depends entirely on how old the GPU is, and it is the single most common reason a command fails.

• H.264 - every card from the GTX 600 series onwards. Still the safest output if the file has to play on someone else's device.
• HEVC - from the GTX 900 series onwards, roughly half the file size of H.264 at similar quality.
• AV1 - RTX 40-series and newer only. Better compression again, royalty-free, and the reason a lot of people upgraded.

Weighing HEVC against AV1 properly? Our guide on whether AV1 is better than H.265 covers the trade-offs, and the best 4K HEVC encoder looks at the high-resolution end.

What Changed in 9.32

Released on 15 August 2026, and the headline is that it moves to NVIDIA's NVENC SDK 13.1.

• AV1 gains hierarchical B-frame reference mode through --bref-mode, which improves compression on AV1 output.
• Mid-stream resolution changes are now handled, with --adapt-resolution setting the maximum to expect. This matters for broadcast captures that switch resolution partway through.
• A new ONNX-based deinterlacer, --vpp-onnx-deint, joins the existing filter set.
• Audio and subtitle track selection can now exclude languages rather than only include them.
• Memory handling is better in three places: the ONNX zero-copy path, long --vpp-kfm runs, and NVENC input generally.
• An MP4 file now gets its trailer written even when the encode hit an error, so a failed job leaves you something playable.

Where NVEnc Fits in a Workflow

Very few people run NVEnc on its own. It is usually the encoding step inside something larger.

StaxRip is the usual front end on Windows, giving you a proper interface over NVEnc along with filtering and container work. FastFlix is a lighter alternative built around FFmpeg with HDR10 metadata handling.

For AV1 specifically, Av1ador is worth a look. HandBrake also drives NVENC directly if you would rather stay in one familiar application.

On the input side, DGDecNV decodes MPEG-2 and Blu-ray sources using the same GPU, which keeps the whole chain off the CPU. NVEnc also accepts Vapoursynth and AviSynth scripts directly if you filter that way.

Afterwards, MKVToolNix tidies tracks and chapters without re-encoding, and FFmpeg covers anything else the pipeline needs.

What You Need to Run It

• An NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600 series card or newer, with the codec support listed above.
• A current NVIDIA driver, since 9.31 targets NVENC SDK 13.1.
• Windows or Linux. There is no macOS build, because Apple hardware has no NVENC.
• Comfort with a command line, or a front end like StaxRip to supply one for you.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is your graphics card. On AMD or Intel hardware NVEnc will not run at all, because NVENC is NVIDIA silicon and there is no software fallback.

If quality per megabyte is what you actually care about, a software encoder is the right answer and the speed penalty is the price. Our write-up of the x265 4.2 release covers where that encoder has got to.

And if the command line is genuinely not for you, start with a front end instead of this page. The full video encoders category lists the alternatives.

Playing What You Encoded

VLC Media Player and Media Player Classic both open HEVC and AV1 files without extra setup.

For the Windows Movies and TV app you need the HEVC Video Extensions or the AV1 Video Extension installed.

To check what actually ended up in a file, our free Codec Finder reads the codecs inside it, and the online HEVC Player tests playback in the browser with nothing installed.

Quick questions

Download NVEnc 9.32 and see how fast your card gets through a file, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.