I’m using Final Cut Pro to put together a promotional video for the department as part of my work as a student assistant. One thing that is frustrating the crap out of me is that if I have a video clip playing in FCP, and I change the active window to a non FCP one (say, a Firefox window) the clip stops playing. Here is an example to illustrate the frustration: I’m playing a clip of a testimonial/interview with a student, listening for snips that I want to keep. This means listening to about 10 minutes of audio while twiddling my thumbs. I’d rather be listening while checking my email, choosing still images to add to the video, searching Google for how to do various video effects… but no. I have to sit there doing nothing at all, staring at the screen for ten minutes so that I can isolate the 20 seconds of the testimonial that I want to keep. GAH!!! I checked the preferences and nothing leapt out at me as being a toggle for this “feature”.
I think that’s pretty standard behavior. If you’re simply watching raw clips, you could open them in Quicktime instead (make sure “Play sound when app is in background” is checked).
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to view timecode in Quicktime 7, which would really help for picking out sound bites.
Fooey.