Issues with ZED TOP, NVIDIA Upscaler TOP, and NVIDIA Background TOP

General TouchDesigner Discussion
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1

Hi everyone,

I’m running into issues with a few TouchDesigner operators related to the ZED camera and NVIDIA Video Effects features. I’m trying to determine whether this is a driver issue, SDK compatibility issue, multi-GPU issue, or something wrong with my local TouchDesigner installation.

System Info

  • OS: Windows 11 Pro

  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX A6000

  • GPU generation: Ampere

  • NVIDIA Driver: 591.59

  • CUDA version reported by nvidia-smi: 13.1

  • Driver model: WDDM

  • Primary display GPU: GPU 0

  • TouchDesigner Build: 2025.32820

  • ZED SDK Version shown in TouchDesigner: 5.0.4

  • NVIDIA Video Effects SDK Version shown in TouchDesigner: 0.7.6

  • ZED Camera Model: Zed2i

The ZED TOP appears to initialize, and the Info panel shows no warnings or errors.

From the Info panel:

Name: /project1/zed1
Type: ZED TOP
ZED SDK Version: 5.0.4
Size: 1920 × 1080
Format: 8-bit fixed RGBA
Warnings: 0
Errors: 0

However, the TOP output appears black / checkerboard instead of showing the camera image.

It looks like the ZED camera metadata is available, but the actual camera image stream is not appearing. Body Tracking works.

Issue 2 — NVIDIA Upscaler TOP

The NVIDIA Upscaler TOP appears to cook, but the output does not show the expected upscaled image,.

Current test:

Input TOP: testGrid
Input resolution: 1280 × 720
NVIDIA Upscaler output: 2560 × 1440
Fill Mode: Fit Best
NVIDIA Video Effects SDK Version: 0.7.6

The TOP cooks without a visible error, but the output looks like a transparent/checkerboard result instead of the upscaled input.

Issue 3 — NVIDIA Background TOP

The NVIDIA Background TOP shows this error:

Error: Failed to load feature: The file could not be found (/project1/nvbackground1)

From the Info panel:

Name: /project1/nvbackground1
Type: NVIDIA Background TOP
Size: 1920 × 1080
Format: 8-bit fixed RGBA
NVIDIA Video Effects SDK Version: 0.7.6

Additional Context

Each operator has been tested individually on separate files. I know there are some conflicts when running Zed and Nvidia operators on the same file.

This workstation has four RTX A6000 GPUs, but only GPU 0 has the display attached, currently there is no SLI config, for now just one gpu is used. I’m wondering if the NVIDIA Video Effects operators or ZED TOP may be trying to initialize on a different GPU, or if there is some GPU affinity issue.

I have attached screenshots showing:

  • ZED TOP Info panel

  • NVIDIA Upscaler TOP Info panel

  • NVIDIA Background TOP error

Thanks!

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3

Do other CUDA based features work on you rmachine such as H265 encoding in the Movie File Out TOP?

1 Like
4

Hi Malcolm, I’ve just tested an export and same result, video is exported but when opened is just black frames.

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5

So this seems like your driver is very broken on that GPU. Hard to say how this has happened though. If I were on that system I would first fully uninstall and then reinstall the drivers, trying a different version.

Have you tried launch TouchDesigner from the command line with the argument -gpuformonitor 0, its possible one of the other GPUs is still getting selected as the one to use.

6

Hey Malcom, thanks for the help I checked the Settings on the Nvidia Control Panel and it seems the issue happens when SLI is Enabled, when disabled ZED and Nvidia tops work fine. Again thank you ! Cheers.