I would disagree. My understanding is that if the VCV Recorder binary includes an implementation of a patented invention, I would be subject to patent fees regardless of whether the product is commercial or noncommercial. The only question that can save me here is “If VCV Recorder uses ffmpeg’s h264_nvenc for example, is enough of the implementation of H.264 offloaded onto hardware that the binary wouldn’t include patented algorithms?”
What I do know is that the first-sale doctrine means that since users have already paid the license fees for H.264 when they bought their GPU, they (or I) would not have to pay it again if used in VCV Recorder. However, this is only true if Recorder uses the GPU’s implementation and doesn’t bundle its own implementation (as that would be another “unit” of the invention.)