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.
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. 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.
In December 2001 Automatic Duck began courting the growing Final Cut Pro user community with the announcement of Automatic Composition Import FCP, 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, 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.
A tool to import Avid sequences into Final Cut Pro was released in December 2003 with a plug-in called Pro Import FCP, 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. Pro Import C3 was later renamed Pro Import Cmb.
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