In case you missed it, I wanted to let you know that the incredible Automatic Duck plug-ins are now available for free.

Automatic Duck supplies plug-ins to allow round-trips between Final Cut Pro 7, Avid, After Effects or Pro Tools. It’s an incredibly useful array of tools if you have ever had the problem of moving your Final Cut Pro timeline into After Effects to do color grading or any post production work.

Most of us have resorted to exporting sequences or single clips from Final Cut Pro 7 (or older versions) and re-imported them into After Effects, doing graphics and effects there, and then re-export it to re-import them again in Final Cut Pro. A real nightmare with a lot of problems. (In the recent past, I used Premiere’s ability to import Final Cut Pro XMLs, then sending it to After Effects, which worked much better.) Automatic Duck gives you a much easier workflow. It also allows you to export timelines as AAF files to be used in Avid, or vice versa from Avid to Final Cut Pro.

The problem so far was that the plug-ins were quite expensive, about $500 each if I recall correctly … and now they are available for absolutely nothing. Incredible. It means I can now also work with Avid editors and send edits back and forth, even if I stick with Final Cut Pro. They even offer the Final Cut Pro X version of it for free, which gives you ability to export AAF audio – for sound mixing – from the new editing suite. I didn’t even know this existed already, it’s huge – it means you can tie Final Cut Pro X into professional audio post production.

The reason for the sudden free availability of the plug-ins, according to its creators, Wes and Harry Plate, is that they are now going to focus on other projects. Wes and his team have been hired by Adobe, and Harry Plate (Wes’ father) will focus on technology integration and other Automatic Duck partners. (Read the full press release below or click here.)

Check out all of their free plug-ins on their website.

Press Release: Automatic Duck news October 28, 2011 If you missed our mail last month you should check it out as it got a lot of people talking. Today we have a follow-up. Our web site has relaunched* and while the overall look of the site is similar there is a dramatic difference in how we are distributing our plug-ins. Starting today Pro Import AE, Pro Import FCP and Pro Export FCP (both versions, for FCP7 and FCPX) are available at no charge. You read this right. Free. We are unable to provide support at the same level as we have over the years, but we didn’t want these plug-ins to go away while they remain useful. So if you can make use of these plug-ins in your projects, enjoy! Thank you to all of our users, working with you for the last 10 1/2 years was a truly wonderful experience. – Wes and Harry