If ever there was some truly good Useful Tools news for editors, then this is it. All of the timeline translation tools that have been produced by Automatic Duck for over 10 years are now free for download. This comes after the rather surprise announcement just over a month ago that Automatic Duck’s founder, Wes Plate, was going to work for Adobe. Then the Automatic Duck website went silent with the promise that the site would relaunch. Now that it has, it looks much the same, but when you hit the download page all four of the main Automatic Duck products pop up ready for download.

Sorry, there is no ProDate DV here. It would also be nice if we could grab the Automatic Duck Media Copy program as well. Support is no longer provided for the free Automatic Duck tools but there are some FAQs on the support page.

It’s great to see these tools released for use while we wait to see how Adobe will integrate them into future versions of its products. And while the Automatic Duck Thank You page is a nice letter to customers, it’s us who should be thanking Automatic Duck. The Plates’ tools have solved many headaches and workflow hurdles over the years. So thanks, Automatic Duck, for the past and we’re all looking forward to the future.