How do I create a slideshow with music and voiceover?

I cannot figure out how to have both the voiceover and the music play during the slideshow.

You can use iMovie HD6 to accomplish this. It is available as a free download to anyone who has purchased and installed iLIfe 08. If you do not have it, use this link. http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

You might have to send your GarageBand voiceover to iTunes for use in iMovie.

I also wanted certain songs to play during certain sets of pictures and I can't figure out how, other than to create separate slideshows for each song, how to set it up to show the photos for the duration of certain songs... if that is possible.

With iMovie, you can vary the durations of your photos so that a certain group will be displayed during a particular song. In addition to your iTunes music, you will also be able to add a voiceover. As an aside, if you plan on using music purchased from iTunes, you should take these preliminary steps.

1. Burn the music in question to a CD.

2. Reimport the music as an AIFF file. iTunes>Preferences>Advanced>Importing>Import using: (drop down menu) AIFF encoder

3. This music can now be imported into your project.

Once you are finished with your project, you can import into iDVD for burning.

I hope this helps.

Do I need to calculate it myself and set each photo to run for a certain time?

This is one way to get the job done. If you music runs for 3 minutes, and you have 60 photos, set each photo to be displayed for three seconds. If the music runs for 3:10, then you can start out with a 3 second duration for the photos, and add an extra second to the duration of ten of them to make the time come out right.

In your post in the iPhoto forum, you mentioned using transitions. Since you want to make certain groups of photos match the duration of a piece of music and also add transitions, then I suggest a slightly different process. You will still be using iMovie to put the project together, so the basic directions that you have been given will still be the same. This is what I would do (and have done) in your situation.

1. Start in iPhoto with the photos that you wish to be grouped to be displayed with a given song.

2. Create a slideshow of these photos. In the settings option, you will be able to select transitions. A time-saver here is that you will also be able to go to the "Settings" and choose the option to "Fit the slideshow to Music". You won't have to figure it out yourself as I described above. If you choose, you can also use the default transition, which will also save time. The default transition is "Dissolve". If you wish to change that, do that in "Settings" as well. You can also make changes for individual photos, including the transition by selecting "Adjust".

3. Once your slideshow is looking the way you want, go to File>Export. This will create a QuickTime movie of this slideshow and will be saved in your Movies folder.

4. While working in iMovie, go to File>Import, and select the movie of your slideshow.

5. Repeat this procedure for each short slideshow that is coordinated with a piece of music.

6. You can still add your voiceover as I described in my earlier post.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Good luck with your project.

I did what you suggested and burnt a cd of all my protected audio, changed my input to aiff, and still they are protected which means I can't play the music with my slideshow???

Good- I'm glad things worked for you.

I did what you suggested and burnt a cd of all my protected audio, changed my input to aiff, and still they are protected which means I can't play the music with my slideshow???

How do you know the music is still protected?

because i went back to export from iphoto to idvd again and got the same message at the end.. you will not be able to play the included music on unauthorised machines.

This message involves a different issue. Read this info from iTunes Help.

_Authorizing a computer to play iTunes Store purchases_

To play purchases from the iTunes Store, you must authorize your computer using your iTunes Store account and password. (Authorization helps protect the copyrights of the purchased items.)

You can authorize up to five computers (Macintosh, Windows, or both) at a time. To play a purchased item on a sixth computer, you need to deauthorize another one. An iPod doesn't count as a computer.

You can authorize or deauthorize a computer at any time. Be sure to deauthorize a computer before you sell it or give it away.

Here are ways to authorize or deauthorize a computer:

◼
To authorize a computer to play iTunes Store purchases, choose Store > Authorize Computer.

◼
To deauthorize a computer, choose Store > Deauthorize Computer.

◼
To deauthorize a computer to play spoken programs purchased from the Audible website, choose Advanced > Deauthorize Audible Account.

◼
If you forgot to deauthorize a computer you no longer own, you can deauthorize all your authorized computers at once. You can use this method once a year.

Choose Store > View My Account, and then click Deauthorize All. If you don’t see this option, it’s because you don’t have five authorized computers.

I hope this helps.

That's great thanks, but I wanted to burn a dvd slideshow to play at the schools graduation, and they don't have itunes on their computers.

However, if I understand your post correctly, your computer does have iTunes. That is where the problem lies. Once the project is burned to a disk via iDVD, it should work on any DVD player or a computer that has a DVD player.

i went through with it and it worked!!!. Why do you think that message came up saying it would not work? Is that just to put people off from using the music in projects???

I'm glad that you got things to work.

Why do you think that message came up saying it would not work?

Sometimes it is just one of those things that we can't figure out.

Is that just to put people off from using the music in projects???

I don't think that this is the case. Many people purchase music from iTunes for use in their projects. If they thought that this music couldn't be used, they would no longer be spending money at the iTunes store.