Ableton Forum

Hi.

Does anyone in here have a Graphire tablet from Wacom?

If yes, does it also have the same problem with the knobs, sliders and zoom/scroll as the Intuos line?

I really need Wacom Tablet support in Live, so if Graphire shows the same errors as the Intuos line, I'm willing to buy a Graphire and send it to Ableton in hope that they will provide support for it.

Anyone from Ableton reading this who could tell me if this seems to be a good idea to approach the problem? I really mean this, it is not a yoke.

Regards,
Daniel

Hi leinad,
I have a Graphire Classic XL.

To be honest I don't usually use it with Live, but I had a quick go and it seems that the scroll button acts like a scroll button would on a mouse - it scrolls the clips in the Session view and the buttons can still be used with the functions I assigned them in the tablet preferences.

I've never used an Intuos. What errors were you getting?

What a magic piece of kit it is! Wacom rules, no yolk!

Hi cashman.

Thanks for the reply.

Well, it's not about the scroll button. The Intuos tablet can be used in such a mode that every xy coord on the tablet represents a xy coord on the screen, you don't push the cursor around as you do with a mouse; the pen itself is the cursor.

This brings a problem with some of the controls in Live: the knobs used to adjust volumes or controller/parameter values, as well as the sliders, and the zooming/panning function in the track views/piano roll, all of them behave in a buggy fashion: when you push the pen on the control and start moving it (let's say down) to decrease the volume, the volume decrease accelerates in an uncontrollable way. The further the pen tip is from the original point, the faster it accelerates.

This makes those controls, which are all essential, almost unusable. The only solution is to change the control values a litlle bit by a little bit, like tipping them as many times as necesary. It's not like sliding any normal windows(TM) slider.

A tablet is truely a blessing.

That is 'Pen Mode' I believe, though I rarely use it.

I tried using Pen Mode and playing about with the pen feel and then the speed and sensitivity in Mouse Mode, but still experienced the same erratic/ hard to control response you mentioned when trying to adjust a volume slider.

Looks like this tablet wasn't made with Live in mind (pr maybe the other way round!)

cashman wrote:Looks like this tablet wasn't made with Live in mind (pr maybe the other way round!)

Certainly the other way around; all other apps I have work just perfect with the tablet.

Thanks for the result, cashman.

cu

leinad wrote:

cashman wrote:Looks like this tablet wasn't made with Live in mind (pr maybe the other way round!)

Certainly the other way around; all other apps I have work just perfect with the tablet.

Thanks for the result, cashman.

cu

NP. It think it's just the movement of the faders and things. Unfortunate.

Careful who you say 'cu' to. It means 'arsehole' in Brasilian Portuguese!

leinad wrote:Hi.

Does anyone in here have a Graphire tablet from Wacom?

If yes, does it also have the same problem with the knobs, sliders and zoom/scroll as the Intuos line?

I really need Wacom Tablet support in Live, so if Graphire shows the same errors as the Intuos line, I'm willing to buy a Graphire and send it to Ableton in hope that they will provide support for it.

Anyone from Ableton reading this who could tell me if this seems to be a good idea to approach the problem? I really mean this, it is not a yoke.

Regards,
Daniel

yo daniel,

indeed I've gotta wacom graphire 3, and using the mouse in "mouse mode" it is buggy with ableton AND ONLY ableton. Any action on knobs or faders causes them to react in the extreme. It's not about settings in the wacom, it must somthing in live...

all other mice work ok, and I also use or have used the shuttlepro 2, trigger finger, 02, and ozone,...that is this is the only blatant controller bug I see. and yes the graphire 3 works fine in logic, cubase, guru, peak, and other programs I use.

as far as I know it isn't actually a bug. It's by design: What happens is that the knobs and faders are in high-resolution, so that mouse-movement when click moves in smaller increments than usual - this is very good for mousing, not so good for tablets.

Workaround: A tablet->midi converter in mackie control emulation Way cooler, anyway - you can do x/y fields and such.

Machinate wrote:as far as I know it isn't actually a bug. It's by design: What happens is that the knobs and faders are in high-resolution, so that mouse-movement when click moves in smaller increments than usual - this is very good for mousing, not so good for tablets.

Workaround: A tablet->midi converter in mackie control emulation Way cooler, anyway - you can do x/y fields and such.

I don't think that's the case...there doesn't appear to be any 'fine mode' going on...if you move the mouse pointer just to the right of the slider compared with on the slide the movement is the same.

It does go crazy with the tablet though.

I actually tried in on my XP laptop without any Wacom driver, and it behaved OK (in generic mouse mode). With the Wacom driver installed it goes crazy (Graphire3).

Edit: actually tried the Wacom driver in "mouse mode" and everything works fine! In XP, latest driver dated 19 April 2006.

husker wrote:

Machinate wrote:as far as I know it isn't actually a bug. It's by design: What happens is that the knobs and faders are in high-resolution, so that mouse-movement when click moves in smaller increments than usual - this is very good for mousing, not so good for tablets.

Workaround: A tablet->midi converter in mackie control emulation Way cooler, anyway - you can do x/y fields and such.

I don't think that's the case...there doesn't appear to be any 'fine mode' going on...if you move the mouse pointer just to the right of the slider compared with on the slide the movement is the same.

you're right, of course. I still think it's the case for knobs, though.

Comfy wrote:http://www.livelab.dk/tablet2midi.php

or if you're a real geek:

Max. www.cycling74.com

Machinate wrote:

husker wrote:

Machinate wrote:as far as I know it isn't actually a bug. It's by design: What happens is that the knobs and faders are in high-resolution, so that mouse-movement when click moves in smaller increments than usual - this is very good for mousing, not so good for tablets.

Workaround: A tablet->midi converter in mackie control emulation Way cooler, anyway - you can do x/y fields and such.

I don't think that's the case...there doesn't appear to be any 'fine mode' going on...if you move the mouse pointer just to the right of the slider compared with on the slide the movement is the same.

you're right, of course. I still think it's the case for knobs, though.

Maybe...maybe not

In mouse mode my Wacom works just fine, in tablet mode it goes crazy again...

the livelab thing is actually very cool, as it works in the background so you can use the mouse AND the tablet (the tablet just sends midi, doesn't move the cursor at all). You print out your custom layout, stick it on the tablet and 'draw' on the sliders, buttons, etc. It hooks into the Wintab driver direct... I don't think you could do that with Max/MSP?

max can definitely do the mode-switching as well, so that the mouse doesn't move.

You use an "external" called wacom 1.1, and that gets all the raw data from the tablet - if you have an intuos it's all sorts of stuff; x/y (5000 values per axis per INCH!!), pressure (1024 values), tilt, Elevation, and (iirc) rotation, so you can turn the pen like a knob.

It also has access to all the buttons: The pen buttons come out of the wacom external, and the rest of the buttons can be interfaced with max directly as keystrokes - the sliders can be mapped to scene up/down quite easily, for instance.

The main thing about working with max is of course the modularity - I have my Wacom Volito2 set up to be an 8-octave keyboard, and I'm working on a step sequencer rig with a friend of mine - and I can switch between the two setups via midi as well.

If you want to see some crazy wacom+MaxMSP stuff in action see these videos:
http://cycling74.com/download/testimoni ... ht_web.mov - a brief demo of a true wacom->maxMSP system.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wd-IJdi31N0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8mTD-FMqaT8

WOW...ok looks like Max/MSP can do the Wacom thing. Though there is something very geeky about a wacom guitar

Makes me just want a Lemur really...*sigh*