Automatic Duck

Last updated
Automatic Duck
Type Private
Industry Software
Founded2001
Headquarters
Snohomish, Washington
,
USA
ProductsTimeline translation software used in the television and film industry
Number of employees
4
Website www.automaticduck.com

Automatic Duck is a software developer based near Seattle known for their plug-ins that translate edited sequences between Final Cut Pro, Avid, After Effects, Quantel, Pro Tools and other professional digital video editing tools.

Contents

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. [1] 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, Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies.

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 exposition in April 2001. [2] [3]

In December 2001 Automatic Duck began courting the growing Final Cut Pro user community with the announcement of Automatic Composition Import FCP, [4] 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, [5] a plug-in that could export an OMF composition for import into an Avid editing system. In February 2003 MacWorld magazine awarded Automatic Sequence Export PRO 4.5 stars. [6]

A tool to import Avid sequences into Final Cut Pro was released in December 2003 with a plug-in called Pro Import FCP, [7] 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 compositing software. [8] 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. 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, [9] sponsoring After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Avid user groups around the United States and Canada. [10]

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 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 helping to guide the development of the AAF file format.

Products

Current products

Discontinued products

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Photoshop</span> Raster graphics editing software

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing. The software's name is often colloquially used as a verb although Adobe discourages such use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video editing software</span> Software used to edit digital video files

Video editing software, or a video editor is software used for performing the post-production video editing of digital video sequences on a non-linear editing system (NLE). It has replaced traditional flatbed celluloid film editing tools and analog video tape editing machines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-linear editing</span> Non-destructive audio, video, or image editing

Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by specialized software. A pointer-based playlist, effectively an edit decision list (EDL), for video and audio, or a directed acyclic graph for still images, is used to keep track of edits. Each time the edited audio, video, or image is rendered, played back, or accessed, it is reconstructed from the original source and the specified editing steps. Although this process is more computationally intensive than directly modifying the original content, changing the edits themselves can be almost instantaneous, and it prevents further generation loss as the audio, video, or image is edited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pro Tools</span> Digital audio workstation

Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture and, more generally, sound recording, editing, and mastering processes.

A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and produce high-quality printed results.

An edit decision list or EDL is used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing. The list contains an ordered list of reel and timecode data representing where each video clip can be obtained in order to conform the final cut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Audition</span> Digital audio workstation

Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation developed by Adobe Inc. featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view.

Soundtrack Pro is a discontinued music composing and audio editing application made by Apple Inc. It included a collection of just over 5,000 royalty free professional instrument loops and sound effects for use. The software was featured in the Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio software bundles; It was discontinued with the release of Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Final Cut Pro</span> Video editing software by Apple

Final Cut Pro 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, and process video footage, and output it to a wide variety of formats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Premiere Pro</span> Video editing software

Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based and non-linear video editing software application (NLE) developed by Adobe Inc. and published as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing program. First launched in 2003, Adobe Premiere Pro is a successor of Adobe Premiere. It is geared towards professional video editing, while its sibling, Adobe Premiere Elements, targets the consumer market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vegas Pro</span> Video editing software

Vegas Pro is a video editing software package for non-linear editing (NLE). The first release of Vegas Beta was on 11 June 1999. The software runs on Windows operating systems.

Final Cut Express was a video editing software suite created by Apple Inc. It was the consumer version of Final Cut Pro and was designed for advanced editing of digital video as well as high-definition video, which was used by many amateur and professional videographers. Final Cut Express was considered a step above iMovie in terms of capabilities, but a step underneath Final Cut Pro and its suite of applications. As of June 21, 2011, Final Cut Express was discontinued in favor of Final Cut Pro X.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Final Cut Studio</span> Suite of software including Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Studio is a discontinued suite of professional video production and post-production made by Apple for the Mac. The suite competed with Avid Media Composer for the high-end movie production market. It first went on sale in 2005.

Open Media Format (OMF), Open Media Framework, or Open Media Framework Interchange (OMFI), or is a platform-independent file format intended for transfer of digital media between different software applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aperture (software)</span> Image organizer for macOS

Aperture is a discontinued professional image organizer and editor developed by Apple between 2005 and 2015 for the Mac, as a professional alternative to iPhoto.

This is a comparison of non-linear video editing software applications. See also a more complete list of video editing software.

AVC-Intra is a type of video coding developed by Panasonic, and then supported in products made by other companies. AVC-Intra is available in Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast cameras.

Boris FX is a North American visual effects and video editing software plug-in developer based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The developer is best known for its four flagship products, Continuum, Sapphire, Mocha, and Silhouette.

GenArts, Inc. was a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based developer of visual effects software for the film, broadcast, and advertising industries. A majority of traditional video content, such as movies, commercials, television shows, newscasts, and music videos, included at least some special effects created by a GenArts product. GenArts created visual effects software and plugins that integrate visual effects such as glows, lightning, fire, and fluids into post-production video editing software from companies like Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, and The Foundry.

Aurora HDR is photographic software developed by Skylum Software for Mac OS X and Windows. It is designed to be a powerful and simple yet fast HDR photo editing software.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.