iMovie 09 - trying to make a slideshow

HOw long do you want each clip to be? Let that = X.

Open iMovie/Preferences and set the default photo duration to be X. Set the default transition to be the cross fade. Also, in iMovie Preferences, you can set the default crop action (Ken Burns, Fit, or Crop).

It is fastest if you set up your photos for the slide show in iPhoto in an album in the order you want them in the movie. Then you can drag the album into your iMovie Project and everything is there, with the durations and transitions automatically added. However, you can add your photos one at a time if you prefer.

When you get ready to add the music, open the music browser, and drag the music track and drop it on the slide where you want the music to start. [See this video tutorial for handling sound|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/imovie08.html#tutorial=audioclips]

By the way, you can edit the slides individually by clicking on the Inspector and setting the duration there, if you want some to be different than the default.

In addition to these excellent suggestions, you can use the Ken Burns effect to good advantage if you have shots that are vertical rather than horizontal. A vertical shot, if not cropped, will have black bars on either side. Presumably you won't want to crop a vertical shot, because you wanted the full height when you took the picture. Using KB, you can make the picture scroll down or up and have the whole picture fill the screen. You will want to manually adjust the time the slide is displayed to about 2X or 3X your normal slide duration. I found that 2 sec is enough for slides without KB, and 5 or 6 sec is better for slides with KB. You can also use KB on horizontal shots to do a left to right or right to left panoramic scroll, which lets you zoom in and still see all the picture. You can also use KB to zoom in on an area of special interest, e.g. a face.

You can select a bunch of photos and assign times to them in a batch. Use Command Select to affect non-contiguous pictures. If you have assigned transitions to photos, you have to Command Select to highlight only the pictures, and not the transitions.

As you probably know from IM06, time is measured in hours/minutes/seconds/frames. So if you want a 2 second time, you have to enter 2.0, not just 2; otherwise you'll get a 2 frame duration, which is less than you want.

All the best.

Karen Woods wrote:
I am desperately trying to make a slideshow w/ photo's from iPhoto. I am doing it in iMovie because I need three different tracks of music behind it. Is this possible and rather easy to do? I am very skilled in '06 but am struggling a great deal w/ '09 (ie: can't figure out how to make each clip longer - doesn't seem to work like they say, can't get the feature where it adds the cross dissolve to each clip to work......) Could someone help me out? I have a deadline of Sunday and am getting nervous.....Thanks in advance..Karen

If I recall correctly...

before you add stuff to your project, adjust the project settings -- automatically add cross dissolve (or whatever) and automatically set duration of still pictures (to whatever length of time), and also automatically set to Ken Burns effect (which you can also adjust in any of the individual picture if you don't like how the effect is auto-applied ... you didn't ask for that option, but adding a bit of motion to the pics will REALLY help it visually.) This DEFINITELY makes the time involved in such a project much quicker.

Good luck! Deborah