Is it possible to play a sequence while using another application?

This should be an easy one.

I know that when I am playing a sequence and I try to switch to another application, the playback will stop. I'm wondering if this were possible to work around.

I'm not interested in doing this while printing to video, but rather just when I'm listening to hours of interviews and I would like to take some notes, or do some Photoshop work while I'm listening for good soundbites, and playback quality/frame rate is not important.

I suppose I could open the audio in iTunes or in Soundtrack Pro, but I want to be able to go back to FCP, stop playback, and mark some in/out points if I happen to hear something good.

I'm just wondering if there's an easy way around this, or if I really have to have 2 computers on my desk.

Thanks!
Casey

There is unfortunately no way of doing this in FCP.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Use "reveal in finder" to go to the source file and play it back in Quicktime. You can set QT to keep playing in the BG to not mute audio. The set the TC window in the lower left of the QT console to display TC and not a counter and you can use that TC to find the same frames in FCP.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Or export the sequence as referenced movie and than use QT Player the way Andrew described.

Andreas

I have a somewhat convoluted workaround for this:

Use MS Word to save a blank .txt (Text Only) document. Open it with Final Cut Pro. It will appear as a window where you can type notes, even while a clip or Sequence is playing with audio in the Viewer/Canvas. So you can put markers, look at timecode, and use all the FCP functions on a clip, while still typing notes in the .txt window.

The only catch is that FCP can't save the .txt document. (Its ability to open .txts is probably so that you can check EDLs) So in order to save your typed notes, you have to stop FCP playback, copy the text in the window, go out into MS Word and paste it onto a proper document file and save from there. Still, you'll have fewer switches between applications this way.

No joy on trying to run Photoshop at the same time, though. Gotta use QuickTime Player or some other media player.


www.derekmok.com

Derek, we have an iPad app coming out in January that simplifies that process:
[cutnotes.posterous.com]

And it will be released with a free app for getting the markers into FCP, as for some reason there's no built-in function for importing a marker list into FCP.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...