max. length of slideshow?

If making the movie in iMovie, so that you can burn in iDvd, it's not the # of clips, it's total length in minutes. Which is limited to 60 minutes, for the best quality

I believe if you exceed the 60 minutes, the quality drops as it has to compress the data.

More than you want!

If you are creating it in iDVD, the simplest, the limit is 99 but you can have as many slideshows as you need. This is my favourite.

If you do it in iMovie it depends on the clip length so with 6 second slides you will get 1,200 in 2 hours.

I believe if you exceed the 60 minutes, the quality drops as it has to compress the data.

It compresses whatever the length but you are right there is a loss of quality once you get over the hour but received wisdom is that it does not affect quality before 75 - 90 minutes burning with "Best Quality".

If you are nowhere near a full DVD, I suggest you make two versions on the same DVD. Put your Movie on but also set up a number of slideshows using the iDVD which will import them and has an option to display with arrows to advance or go back. It will work best with a larger number of slideshows with a smaller number of photos (like albums).

Yes - we all assumed the problem was much bigger. 75 slides in a movie will not take you long to set up.

Remember that once you have imported them and got them in sequence you can select all then apply an effect (like Ken Burns) to all at once then do the same with transitions. You can then modify any which are non-standard.

Most important Import in iDVD DO NOT share to iDVD from iMovie or you will lose a lot of quality.

It is my view that the iLife designers have completely distorted the perspective of iDVD by allowing it to become the slave of other applications. If you share from iMovie, then that application attempts to render the stills and then sends the output for a direct burn in iDVD. This is the lazy way.

Let iDVD do the job it is designed for. Launch it, select a theme, the simpler the better at the start, then either use file import or drag the .mov file from the Finder onto the iDVD screen. iDVD will then render the slideshow and make a much better job of it. When ready you can get it to burn the DVD.

Hi Bill - for best quality of the stills you import to iMovie, make sure that the Ken Burns effect is turned on BEFORE you import them. Photos rendered by KB are much better quality than those only later rendered by iMovie itself.

Hi Bill -

but i want to assemble my stills and music in imovie and then import into idvd to make my dvd for tv

Yes, that's what I assumed. The method I described takes place before sending the movie to iDVD.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'figures underneath the stills' - the figures at the very bottom of the iMovie screen indicate the length of your movie in minutes, seconds and frames. The stills themselves have no numbers under them except for an identification name or number.
Please clarify.

Hi Bill - the numbers are merely for identification. They bear no relationship to the maximum number of stills that an iDVD slideshow can include, nor do they have any other significance for iMovie itself.
The clip/still numbers can be replaced with names of your choosing, if you so wish.