[BUG] ZED ROS 2 Driver Fails to Launch in Isaac ROS Container - “unknown encoder: libx264”

[dennisdarrow]

System Environment:

• Hardware: Jetson Orin Nano 8GB Developer Kit

• Software: Fresh flash of JetPack 6.2.1 (L4T 36.4.4)

• Docker Image: nvcr.io/nvidia/isaac/ros:aarch64-ros2_humble_77e6a678c2058abf96bedcb8f7dd4330

Problem Analysis:

ZED Camera is Fully Operational on Host: The ZED camera and its SDK are fully functional when run directly on the main Jetson OS, outside of any container. ZED_Explorer works perfectly.

Successful Build Inside Container: We then followed the official “Isaac ROS ZED Setup” guide precisely. This included starting the Docker container with run_dev.sh, installing the ZED SDK inside the container with the provided script, and running rosdep and colcon build. The colcon build of the ZED ROS 2 driver completed successfully with no errors.

ZED Explorer Works Inside Container: As a verification step, we confirmed that the non-ROS /usr/local/zed/tools/ZED_Explorer tool works correctly inside the container, proving that the ZED SDK installation and hardware access within the Docker environment are functional.

ROS 2 Launch Fails with ffmpeg Error: However, when we attempt to launch the ROS 2 driver that we just built, it fails.

• Launch Command:

• Specific Error: The launch fails with multiple instances of this error:

Final Issue to be Resolved:

The ZED driver builds successfully but fails to run because a core ROS 2 component, image_transport, cannot find the libx264 video codec. Further diagnostics confirmed that the ffmpeg library provided in the base Isaac ROS Docker image was not compiled with libx264 support, making it impossible to run any ROS 2 camera node that uses standard compressed video transport. The ffmpeg package in the official Docker image needs to be fixed.

[dennisdarrow]

Hi,

Just wanted to gently follow up on this issue. We've confirmed the ffmpeg library in the official Docker image is missing the libx264 encoder at runtime, and that ROS 2 GUI tools fail to render video even when topics are correctly published.

This is currently blocking our ability to use the ZED camera with Isaac ROS. Is there any update on a potential fix or workaround?

Thank you.