How many photos fit in 1 slideshow

What is the number limit on how many photos you can put into a slideshow?

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Posted on Apr 5, 2011 1:50 PM

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4 replies

Apr 6, 2011 11:16 AM in response to scz890

There are many ways to produce slide shows using iPhoto, iMovie or iDVD and some limit the number of photos you can use (iDVD has a 99 chapter (slide) limitation).

If what you want is what I want, namely to be able to use high resolution photos (even 300 dpi tiff files), to pan and zoom individual photos, use a variety of transitions, to add and edit music or commentary, place text exactly where you want it, and to end up with a DVD that looks good on both your Mac and a TV - in other words end up with and end result that does not look like an old fashioned slide show from a projector - you may be interested in how I do it. You don't have to do it my way, but the following may be food for thought!

Firstly you need proper software to assemble the photos, decide on the duration of each, the transitions you want to use, and how to pan and zoom individual photos where required, and add proper titles. For this I use Photo to Movie. You can read about what it can do on their website:

http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php

(Other users here use the alternative FotoMagico: http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/homevspro/ which you may prefer - I have no experience with it.)

Neither of these are freeware, but are worth the investment if you are going to do a lot of slide shows. Read about them in detail, then decide which one you feel is best suited to your needs.

Once you have timed and arranged and manipulated the photos to your liking in Photo to Movie, it exports the file to iMovie 6 as a DV stream. You can add music in Photo to Movie, but I prefer doing this in iMovie where it is easier to edit. You can now further edit the slide show in iMovie just as you would a movie, including adding other video clips, then send it to iDVD 7, or Toast, for burning.

You will be pleasantly surprised at how professional the results can be!

To simply create a slide show in iDVD 8 onwards from images in iPhoto or stored in other places on your hard disk or a connected server, look here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1089

Apr 5, 2011 2:40 PM in response to scz890

Welcome to the Apple Discussions. To play in iPhoto there's probably no limitation. However, if you plan to export the slideshow as a QT movie file then there would be some limitation on the number that would be tied in to the amount of free space you have on the hard drive into which save the movie file. Those QT files get pretty big.

How many photos were you considering? I had a slideshow of 2000 photos play in iPhoto. But converting to a QT movie file others have had problems with 200. There's no set number.



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Apr 6, 2011 5:19 AM in response to scz890

Thank you for your quick and knowledgeable response. I am currently looking for a solution for a project I am working on. I would like to have a roughly 1 hour long slideshow that will be played on a loop during a trade show. I have around 720 photos that I would like to use in the slideshow, but the windows based programs and even Animoto, only allow for 200-300 photos per slideshow. In the past i got around this by making multiple slideshows and combining them into a new movie at the end. But I was hoping to remove those steps and just dump all the photos into one program . I use a PC at work, but have Macs at home, I will put the photos on a disk and bring them home to use iphoto if I know for sure that it will make things easier for my project. Obviously, even though i have macs at home, I have not explored iphoto at all. So I thought the easiest way to know what would work best, is to reach out to you - the experts, and just see if there are limitations.
Assuming I have enough space (which I should have a couple hundred extra gigs)do you think I could easily create a slideshow of 700 photos and burn that to a disk to be played on a separate computer?

Apr 6, 2011 8:54 AM in response to scz890

I've not exported a slideshow from iPhoto with more than about 50 photos so don't have any first hand experience with slideshows of that size.

Other have had problems with large slideshows, particularly with music. They would freeze/crash part way into the export process. That's not to say you will also.

I would suggest you keep it simple as far as transitions and special effects and themes and give it a try.

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How many photos fit in 1 slideshow

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