Automatic Duck is a

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

based near Seattle known for their plug-ins that translate edited sequences between

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro (often abbreviated FCP or FCPX) is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps collection. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, a ...

, Avid,

After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc.; it is used for animation and in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Among oth ...

Quantel Quantel was a company based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1973 that designed and manufactured Digital data, digital production equipment for the Broadcasting, broadcast television, video production and motion picture industries. It was ...

Pro Tools Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-productio ...

and other professional digital video editing tools.

History

Automatic Duck was founded in 2001 by Harry Plate and Wes Plate, father and son respectively. Before this time the junior Plate has been working as a video editor and frequently needed the ability to translate Avid sequences into After Effects.AE and Avid, Strategic Lessons for Success
, tutorial that originally appeared on the WWUG website Wes was quite familiar with the OMFI file format and knew if After Effects could be made to read OMF it would open many possibilities for editors around the world. Harry's career was as a software engineer, having worked for

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, Californi ...

and

Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American global company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for laboratories. Agilent was established in 1999 as a spin-off from Hewlett-Packar ...

. Ideas for a plug-in for After Effects were discussed as early as 1999, but it wouldn't be until October 2000 that development would begin in earnest. Automatic Duck's first product, an After Effects import plug-in that could read Avid OMF exports, was called Automatic Composition Import and shipped just before the

National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a Industry trade group, trade association and lobbying, lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasting, broadcasters in th ...

exposition in April 2001.Automatic Composition Import press release
February 26, 2001NAB 2001 -- An Editor's Report
/ref> In December 2001 Automatic Duck began courting the growing Final Cut Pro user community with the announcement of Automatic Composition Import FCP,
December 5, 2001 a plug-in set that would allow Final Cut Pro sequences to be translated into After Effects. Automatic Duck started offering interchange between Final Cut Pro and Avid in July 2002 with Automatic Sequence Export Pro,Automatic Sequence Export Pro announcement
July 1, 2002 a plug-in that could export an OMF composition for import into an Avid editing system. In February 2003

MacWorld ''Macworld'' is a digital magazine and website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG. History ''Macworld'' was founded by David Bunnell and Cheryl Woodard (publishers) and Andrew Fl ...

magazine awarded Automatic Sequence Export PRO 4.5 stars.MacWorld magazine review
February 1, 2003 A tool to import Avid sequences into Final Cut Pro was released in December 2003 with a plug-in called Pro Import FCP,, December 8, 2003 a plug-in for Final Cut Pro that read OMF files. In 2004 Automatic Duck released Pro Import C3, a plug-in for Discreet's

Combustion Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion ...

compositing software.Pro Import C3 announcement
June 28, 2004 Pro Import C3 was later renamed Pro Import Cmb. Eventually the After Effects import plug-in was renamed Pro Import AE and the Final Cut OMF export plug-in was renamed Pro Export FCP. The plug-ins have improved in the amount of information translated as well as adding support for newer file formats such as AAF, MXF and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

. Pro Import AE is now at version 4.0, Pro Import FCP at version 2.0 and Pro Export FCP at version 4.0. In September 2011 Automatic Duck announced a close partnership with Adobe Systems to bring that same interchange functionality to Premiere Pro. Wes Plate joined the Adobe Product Marketing team while Harry Plate will be assisting with the technology integration. The company later announced that due to Wes and Harry relocating to Adobe all Automatic Duck products would be offered free of charge, stating that they will not be able to offer a level of customer support that justifies charging for their products.

Community involvement

Since the beginning, Automatic Duck has been a supporter of editing user groups,Interview with Wes Plate, President, Automatic Duck
sponsoring After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Avid user groups around the United States and Canada.
June 18, 2008 Automatic Duck President Wes Plate has a long history with online community support, having been a member of the Avid-L since 1996 and having in the past been a leader on the WWUG and

Creative COW Creative COW is a website of support communities for digital video, video editing, and media production professionals in broadcasting, motion graphics, visual effects and film. It provides over 60 online support discussion forums spanning a wid ...

as well as being active on other listservs and discussion forums. Automatic Duck is also a leader in standards development, being an Associate Member of the

Advanced Media Workflow Association The Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) is an industry association focused on the content creation industry's move to IP-based architectures. AMWA promotes industry standards that allow diverse devices to discover and interoperate with eac ...

helping to guide the development of the AAF file format.

Products

Current products

*Pro Import AE 4.0 *Pro Export FCP 4.0 *Pro Import FCP 2.0 *Media Copy 4.3.0 *ProDate DV

Discontinued products

*Pro Import PPro *Pro Export PPro *Pro Import Cmb 1.0

References

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External links

Automatic Duck official site
Software companies established in 2001 Software companies based in Washington (state) Software companies of the United States