I am way late with this, but better late than never -- and better free than $500. Wes and Harry Plate, the father-son duo behind Automatic Duck, were recently hired by Adobe. Automatic Duck makes (made) the well-known plugins Pro Import AE, Pro Import FCP, and Pro Export FCP, which allow users to open Final Cut Pro projects in After Effects, as well as enabling some other interoperability. This move by Adobe seems as much to prevent the duo from updating their must-have plugins for Final Cut Pro X, as much as it is to help Adobe with their already admirable integration between Premiere Pro and After Effects, but as a result all of Automatic Duck's existing plugins -- which formery ran $500 apiece -- are free. Said Wes and Harry:
“Because we are so busy with these new projects we cannot provide the same level of support for our plug-ins that we used to, therefore we can’t in good conscience charge money for them. But we don’t want our popular tools to go unused if they are still useful to people. Therefore we have decided to make them available at no charge. Enjoy!”
It's also worth noting that if you're trying to get into After Effects from Final Cut Pro 7, you can export your edit timeline as an XML file, import it into Premiere Pro, and then open that Premiere file inside AE. However, here's a workflow using Automatic Duck's Pro Import AE 4.0 to open RED-based Final Cut Pro 7 projects inside AE:
As for the "limited time" thing, I think I read somewhere that the plugins would eventually be pulled, so if you think you might have a use for them, get while the getting's good.
