Using a Tablet

Many intensive professional users have switched to tablets for their 2-D and 3-D software, to reduce the strain on their hands and wrists. Tablets behave a bit differently than mice, and tend to have complex drivers that can cause problems for other software including SynthEyes. In this writeup, we'll describe the preferences in SynthEyes that can make life easier for tablet users, as well as some technical issues concerning tablets.

Basics

The most fundamental difference between mice and tablets is that while a mouse is a relative positioning device that can be moved anywhere on your desktop, a tablet is an absolute positioning device, with a direct correspondence between a position on the tablet and a position on the screen.

A number of SynthEyes operations are designed to take advantage of the relative positioning capabilities of the mouse, by dynamically changing the apparent "speed" of mouse motion, and by allowing the mouse to continue to move even when it has reached the edge of the screen, by wrapping back to the other side. This cursor-wrap is not possible on a tablet.

Also, mice typically have more buttons and scroll wheel that a tablet pen does not. 

Preferences

To begin with, you should turn off the Enable Cursor Wrap preference checkbox. This will tell SynthEyes not to try to move the cursor back to the bottom of the screen when it reaches the top, and vice versa. When you adjust a spinner or tracker position and reach the edge of the tablet, you need to release the button, go to the other side of the tablet or screen, then continue.

Depending on your tablet's pen and the driver setup, you may wish to turn on the No middle-mouse button preference. While normally the middle mouse button pans the viewports, with this checkbox on you can hold down ALT (PC) or Command (Mac) and use the left mouse button to pan, and use ALT/Command and the right button to link trackers.

It can be preferable to click a pen button only at the beginning of a motion, and again at the end, without having to hold the button in the middle. The Click-in/Click-off preference allows you to do that. It is at least a little smart, affecting only the viewports and the spinners, not items such as buttons where it would be a nuisance. This option can even be helpful with mice.

If you have trouble stopping playback when using a tablet (or mouse), turn on the Enhanced tablet response preference. It helps out with some tablet drivers that are trying to be too tricky (see below).

Hardware and Drivers

Tablet drivers are the piece of software that lives in the operating system, talking to the tablet hardware and producing a stream of mouse-like messages describing what the tablet's pen is doing. 

Historically, the tablet drivers have resorted to a number of tricks to reduce the apparent delay between the time you move the pen and the time the cursor draws on screen. Some of these tricks are fine for drawing programs, but not suitable for computational programs such as SynthEyes. At their worst, these tricks can make it take a long time to stop SynthEyes when it is playing back a shot, even apparently hanging your machine while they wait for playback to stop.  The Enhanced tablet response preference actually works by inserting a very short delay to the playback of every frame, which is enough to convince the tablet driver that it is a good time to forward the latest tablet click to SynthEyes.

Also, you should connect your tablet directly to your PC, not to a USB hub. With a tablet connected to a hub, problems have been reported with tablet buttons partially releasing even though they are still pushed. These are tablet driver problems, deep within the unconscious nervous system, not something in SynthEyes.

The tablet manufacturers have worked to correct these problems, so if you are having trouble with SynthEyes and a tablet, you should be sure to go to the tablet manufacturer's web site and get the most recent tablet drivers.