How do I burn my iPhoto Slideshow to a DVD?

You're going to hate this answer, but you're using the wrong app to make the slideshow. iPhoto is not desinged for that kind of fine cutting against the music.

Alternatives to iPhoto's slideshow include:

iMovie, on every Mac sold.

Others, in order of price: PhotoPresenter $29

PhotoToMovie $49.95

PulpMotion $129

FotoMagico $29 (Home version) ($149 Pro version, which includes PhotoPresenter)

Final Cut Pro X $299

It's difficult to compare these apps. They have differences in capability - some are driven off templates. some aren't. Some have a wider variety of transitions. Others will have excellent audio controls. It's worth checking them out to see what meets your needs. However, there is no doubt that Final Cut Pro X is the most capable app of them all. You get what you pay for.

The iDVD forum will help you on burning

https://discussions.apple.com/community/ilife/idvd

Ok, so I haven't spent that many hours, but it's still just as frustrating! I just want to take the iPhoto slideshow and burn it to a DVD without having to export to this, save to this, pull it in this program and then use Disk Utility to burn it and imbed this! UGH. I guess I'm an idiot. This is one of the reasons why I bought a Mac, it's supposed to be much more user friendly. I've googled it and everything, Does anyone have step by step directions on how to make this happen? Mine is only 75 pictures. It's not very long and I haven't done all the work that this poor dad did for his daughters graduation. Did you get it done, by the way???

Thanks to all who offer help! I really do appreciate it!

Wendy

ive made some pretty decent slideshows in iMovie as well, which is free 😀

but yeah there are much better programs out there.

as to why the timing is off, could honestly be just because it was done in iphoto, its got that issue occasionally.

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 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 7 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

I would do it in Adobe Premiere. I use it for all of our family videos. It is not cheap but Adobe has a 30 day fully functional demo license. It is a very good semi-professional video editing application. One of its features being able to incoporate still images into vides. If it can do that, it could certainly create a slideshow from still images. You can import as many pictures as you want into a timeline, select how long you want each to display, then mix music with it (in fact you can mix several music tracks and create transitions). If you organize everything the way you want it, then you can preview it and create a movie in any format you want ie. Xvid. Xvid will play on any modern DVD player.

iMove has pretty much all the same features and comes on your Mac.

I've tried to export a slideshow from iphoto to a usb numerous times and it keeps coming out with blank spots. The music still plays, but there will be randon minutes with no pictures. They're being skipped. Burning onto a cd rendered the same results.

Any suggestions as to what I can do to make this not happen?

If you have an old copy of the iLIfe 06 disk install iMovie 6 HD and use it. It's by far the best iMovie verson for use with iDVD and for fine tuning multiple audio tracks to slides or videos.

It also sends the best quality video to iDVD than any of the other iMovie versions.

Happy Holidays