PowerDuck Beta 0.9.6 beta 2

PowerDuck Beta 2 makes Bridge Gaps work when Final Cut Pro plays your dialogue and music on different clocks, which it does when the dialogue sits inside a compound or multicam clip.

• Bridge Gaps now holds the music down through short pauses in that setup too. Before, the music could swell up in every pause between sentences there, because PowerDuck only held it for the Hold time.
• When the dialogue clip ends, the music comes back about half a second later, as before.
• Stopping and playing again from a quiet spot brings the music straight back up instead of holding it for the Bridge time.
• Fixed: a dialogue clip on a different clock could leave a brief stray duck at the wrong place in the music.

Still open: exporting a project where the dialogue sits on a different clock from the music does not duck under the dialogue yet. Playback in the timeline does.

Your beta trial carries over from Beta 1; updating does not restart it.

PowerDuck Beta 0.9.6 beta 1

The first PowerDuck Beta. It opens the beta channel: from here, new PowerDuck work can be tried before it ships.

• PowerDuck Beta installs as its own plug-in beside PowerDuck, under PowerBeta in the Effects browser. Your projects keep using the release until you put the beta on a clip.
• Its own 14-day trial, separate from the release's trial. Trying the beta does not spend the release's days, and a Mac whose release trial has run out still gets the full 14 days. A PowerDuck license works in the beta too.
• Fixed in the beta: activating a license could drop what the other copy (release or beta) had saved since it was opened, because the two share one license file. Activation now merges instead of overwriting.

The ducking itself is the same as 0.9.5. This beta opens the channel; it does not change the sound.

PowerDuck 0.9.5

The zero-setup release.

Auto Detect with zero setup. Dropping PowerDuck on a clip is now the whole gesture: it starts listening immediately, the first playback decides the role, and the Voice or Music/SFX pill lights up, locked. The hint line narrates every step. If it cannot hear anything it settles safely on Voice, says so, and quietly re-checks itself the first time the clip actually plays.

Bed Level ships on Auto. Out of the box PowerDuck places the bed against your voice with Max Level as the top - the full mixer, no setup. Switch to Manual any time; saved projects keep their existing setting.

One-click updates. When Check for Updates finds a newer version, the panel shows a download link straight to the installer.

Kinder support emails. Report a Problem only mentions crash logs (and only opens the crash folder) when your editor actually crashed recently, and every prebuilt email now says what happens next and when to expect a reply.

Full notes: https://rafaelludwig.com/apps/powerduck/manual/#whatsnew

PowerDuck 0.9.4

Quick follow-up to 0.9.3.

One-click updates. When Check for Updates finds a newer version, the Setup panel now shows a download link straight to the installer instead of just naming the version.

Coming from 0.9.2 or earlier? Read the 0.9.3 notes too: browser-based activation for firewalled Macs is new, and it is the release most worth having.

Full notes: https://rafaelludwig.com/apps/powerduck/manual/#whatsnew

PowerDuck 0.9.3

The activation release.

Activate from your browser. On Macs where a firewall, VPN or company network blocks the plugin's internet access (both Activate and Check for Updates fail while your browser works fine), activation now falls back to a browser page: it verifies your key online and hands you a signed code that activates the plugin fully offline. It never needs the internet again after that. The link appears automatically in the Setup panel when normal activation cannot connect.

Setup panel polish. The version and build date moved to the top of the panel, and the garbled characters next to the support email are fixed.

Full notes: https://rafaelludwig.com/apps/powerduck/manual/#whatsnew

PowerDuck 0.9.2

PowerDuck 0.9.2

• One family folder: PowerAudio. PowerDuck and PowerEQ now sit together under PowerAudio in the effects browser (previously "PowerEQ"). Existing timelines and settings are untouched; searching "PowerDuck" still finds it.

Update PowerEQ to 1.1.5 in the same sitting and the pair moves together.

PowerDuck 0.9.1

The timing release: the sliders mean exactly what they say.

Timing spec. One rule across the panel: the Ahead sliders set WHEN a fade starts, the Fade sliders set HOW LONG it takes. Duck Ahead starts the Fade Down before the first word; if the fade outlasts the head start it keeps gliding smoothly under the voice until it lands (no more "brick wall" at the first word).

New: Rise Ahead (0-2 s). Start the Fade Up before a phrase actually ends, so the music blooms under the last words. Endings are verified from the learned timeline; short lines and bridged pauses keep classic timing and are never swallowed.

Auto (Detect) returns, rebuilt. Classifies once (on drop with Background Render on, else on first play), then LOCKS. Never re-guesses. One click overrides.

Steady through Final Cut's prefetch. Out-of-order background renders could interrupt a fade mid-glide and leak millisecond bursts of full-level music under a duck. The ride is now continuous through all of it.

Territory-based link. A Voice copy owns exactly the ground its clip occupies, live. Cut, copied or moved clips free their old territory; stale knowledge can no longer duck a silent gap.

Also: Fade Down range to 2 s and Duck Ahead to 3 s; panel regrouped in mix order; Bridge Gaps delivers its full labelled window; recommended workflow documented: PowerDuck is best used as part of the final mixing and audio work, on a compound clip (see the manual's Best Practice section).

Full notes: https://rafaelludwig.com/apps/powerduck/manual/#whatsnew

PowerDuck 0.9.0

The export is the mix.

Several separate faults could leave an export un-ducked, or too loud at the top of the timeline, while playback sounded right. All of them are fixed, and every release is now gated on an absolute level check that a uniformly loud export cannot pass.

• Pick the role: Voice or Music. Auto (Detect) is retired. It needed at least two seconds of a clip before either half of the pair could act, and until it decided, a Voice copy published nothing at all. Invisible while you play, audible at the head of every export where each copy starts fresh. Choosing the role takes one click and is right from the first sample. Projects saved with Auto keep the roles it had already worked out, so there is nothing to redo.
• Not knowing can lower the music, never raise it. The level stage treated "no voice here" and "nothing known here yet" as the same thing, and that path boosts. A quiet bed could stage up to 12 dB hot at the start of an export and stay there for the whole render.
• The duck no longer arrives early at the top of a timeline. Bridge Gaps could treat the start of a render as if speech had just finished, welding the head of the export to the first line and ducking fully seconds before the first word.
• Bypass and expired trials are truly silent partners. Both played back perfectly transparent but applied a 9 dB duck on export, which also meant a clip you had baked keyframes for exported with the keyframes plus a phantom duck.
• New: Music Volume. Bed Level Manual now has a control of its own. Bring the music up where there is no voice, the gaps between lines and the dialogue-free stretches, while leaving it exactly alone underneath speech. It fades in on your Fade Up and holds steady through a bridged pause.
• New defaults. Bed Level starts on Manual (PowerDuck stays out of your level path and only ducks) and Hold starts at 0 (Bridge Gaps carries the pauses, so the music returns promptly at a real ending).

Universal (Apple silicon + Intel), AU + VST3, Developer ID signed, notarized and stapled.

PowerDuck 0.8.4

Exports duck from the very first frame.

• Export cold start fixed: Auto Detect's verdict now saves with your project, so the fresh plugin instances an export spawns start already knowing which clip is Voice and which is Music. Exports no longer open at full music level before detection settles, and repeated exports are consistent.
• Bridge Gaps, exactly as intended: a pause shorter than the window holds the duck rock-steady, with no volume or EQ motion at all, until the next line lands. A gap the learned timeline shows is longer than the window rises at your Fade Up right after Hold. Only sections PowerDuck has never heard keep the gentler accelerating rise, so an unknown pause can never pump.
• Cuts onto clips without PowerDuck release promptly, right after Hold plus Fade Up, instead of lingering.
• Steadier under Final Cut's background renders: held gaps can no longer dip or snap when clips render out of order, and Hold settings above half a second are now honored in full.

PowerDuck 0.8.3

Manual means manual, and multicam is fixed.

• Bed Level: Manual now means your faders rule — no level staging, no lift, no hold, no limiting. Nothing touches the sound but the duck itself; with Duck Amount at 0 it is bit-transparent (verified by a null test on every release). Auto keeps the full managed-level behavior.
• Multicam dialogue fixed for good: a Voice on a multicam clip runs on source timecode; it now detects the mismatch and links purely by the live path, so ducking always follows the actual dialogue.
• Auto Detect: a steady, rehearsed narrator no longer reads as a musical beat, and an early mis-classification corrects itself within seconds of clear evidence.
• Tighter feel: the level ride into an upcoming voice clip starts ~1.5 s out and lands at the first word; Quick Styles use shorter Holds now that short pauses are carried by the breathing release.