Wacom Intuos failure in After Effects

[jeffrey.garriock]

I've been using a Wacom tablet for 7+ years (first a bamboo, now an Intuos pen & touch) in place of a mouse for all my applications. Just in the past month, when I open After Effects, after about 3-5 minutes of use, I'm no longer able to move the cursor using the pen. If I click down, I am still able to click and drag, and in the Wacom diagnostic tool, everything looks perfectly fine. The problem is, the functionality stops across ALL applications and I can't get it back unless I fully restart the computer. This means once I open After Effects, i must switch to a mouse until I have a chance to fully restart my computer, and then I can't open After Effects without breaking my pen tablet's functionality. 

Tried calling Wacom support and all they had me do was uninstall and reinstall my drivers several times. I tried moving my tablet to another computer (Brand new 2020 Imac, fresh install of the newest AE) and am still having the same issue. Is this a bug? Is my tablet broken? It's not that old, I've only had it for a year or two and it's functionality with every other app I use is completely fine. This only occurs with After Effects.

Has anyone else had this issue?

[Ja0rel]

same issuee hereeee

[Ja0rel]

help please 

[paulopuiati]

Same issue. So exhausting.

Macbook Pro 13inch 2017 16gb 3,5Hz i7

[RonPaul2016]

WORKAROUND:

AE breaks when you scroll up or down in the timeline...so what I did was place a piece of tape over the Wacom Pen's buttons so I stop using them to scroll. Instead, use the spacebar/hand to scroll up and down.

(ADOBE, you charge us an arm and a leg for sh*t that doesn't work. Can't wait for alternatives to overtake)

[fernandob57729602]

same same issue for me.
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012)

os catalina

8GB  DDR3

[Jam1n]

I'm having the same issue.

Using a MacBook Pro 15", 2018, 

MacOS Catalina 10.15.7

Wacom Intuos PTK-650. Driver: 6.3.41-2

Cannot use the pen at all unless I restart the machine, after opening After Effects

[Edoardo Lenzi]

Helps please. This problem has persisted for four months, I called all the assistance centers but nothing. This problem changes the way of working a lot and is not pleasant, at least one answer.

Thanks Edward

[Rameez_Khan]

Hi all,

Apologies for my delayed response.

We're investigating this issue in-house but don't have a successful repro. We're looking forward to working with you directly. If anyone is interested in working with us, please send me a private message.

Thanks to those who have already reached out to me. I'll get back to you soon!

Best,

Rameez

[shokoh12157003]

I ve the same issue. Please fix the problem asap. I cannot work properly. 

I dont wanna pay a lot of money for this exhausting experience. 

[abuse removed by moderator]

[Ja0D45]

x2

[Ja0D45]

help please, i waste my money in 2 wacom, in 1 huion and the problem is after effects? 😞 this news is very sad,  

[Fel Souza]

Same problem here! So frustrating! 

[Peta5E09]

Yeah, I have this issue too! It's so annoying.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019)

processor - 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

Memory - 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

Graphics - Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 M

[Rameez_Khan]

UPDATE:

Huge thanks to Kristian van der Linde for working with us! 

We're finally able to repro the issue and have bumped up the priority of the bug. We hope to fix this soon! 

For now, the workaround is to go to System Preferences > Wacom Tablet > Pen and changing the click behavior to "Pan/Scroll (Legacy)". If that doesn't work, change it to anything but scroll.

Again, thank you to all of those who were willing to help and had reached out to me directly.

Best,

Rameez

[Peta5E09]

Done. Very exciting to be using my wacom tablet again for AE!

[alexreyes]

I tried this solution but the same thing happened to me once I scrolled in the timeline of AE.
I did however find another work around that solved my problem and wanted to share in case anyone else was still having issues. 

In your Wacom preferences for After Effects:
Instead of setting the lower pen button to pan/scroll (legacy), set it to Keystroke and make that keystroke *spacebar*.

This is allowing me to pan and scrub through the timeline without issue like I had in the past with my older tablet.

Hope that helps!

[Rameez_Khan · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

Until this bug is fixed, I'm posting both workarounds in this comment and marking it as a correct answer temporarily so that it's helpful for others.

Workaround 1:

Go to System Preferences > Wacom Tablet > Pen and change the click behavior to "Pan/Scroll (Legacy)"

Workaround 2:

Go to System Preferences > Wacom Tablet > Pen and change the click behavior to "Keystroke" and set the Spacebar key as that keystroke.

When the bug is fixed, I'll come back to update the thread and the correct answer.

Best,

Rameez

AE Community Manager

[RonPaul2016]

Not a workaround that's helpful, we need access to the button and the scroll, for all Adobe charges they should hire the manpower to make it work right.

[qnaipe]

Hi! Does this works for Windows 10 as well?

[tane_bear]

I've had this same problem on my old iMac 2012 and my new iMac2020.  I'm using an Intuos Pro PTH-660.

Restarting the wacom driver fixes it but there isn't an easy way to do that without logging out and back in.

I solved this by: Writing a shell script that restarts the wacom driver without needing to logout and in again.

#!/bin/bash
wacomTabletDriverPID=`ps ax | grep WacomTabletDriver | grep -v grep | awk  '{print $1}'`;
kill -9 $wacomTabletDriverPID;
open /Applications/Wacom\ Tablet.localized/.Tablet/WacomTabletDriver.app

It basically finds the wacom tablet driver process and kills it. Then restarts the Tablet driver.

I ended up wrapping it in an app so when it happens I can just use spotlight to quickly run the app without needing to leave After effects.

I've put the app here if anyone wants to use it.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PrtjxiOiFGN8OscgEwc7KDyKdXYkP9pG?usp=sharing

Hope this helps.

[Rameez_Khan]

Wow! This is awesome, tane_bear.

Just FYI: We're working with Wacom on a fix and I'm hopeful that this is going to be fixed very soon.

Best,

Rameez

[Luis José5E1C]

Many thanks. This one was the only fix to continue using the pen. The new driver (6.3.43-3) didn't help.

[david24416018hxl1]

You are the best!!!  thank you so much this was very helpful

[Guest]

Yeah, this problem exists for about three years. Adobe is just not interested in fixing that bug...

The "correct answer" is wrong I'm afraid, since these options simply don't exist like that in Wacom drivers. Even if you try something similar this would only disable the functionality of your pen. (And I'm not even using any form of "pan/scroll" on the pen.) But you would have to test this before posting such a "workaround" wouldn't you?

Great job Adobe. Just don't cry if motion designers worldwide are finaöy moving on to working software solutions because they have enough of this at last.

[paolag48593683]

thats right