slideshow exported from iphoto has black bars across top and bottom

Is the new camera aspect ratio 3:2 (i.e., like a 35mm camera) or 4:3 (like SD TV and most digital cameras)?

A Google search says that my camera ( Nikon D50) has an aspect ratio of 3.2.

Excellent choice of entry level ("easier to use") D-SLR. I use the earlier D-70 but recommended this model to my niece. If interested, here is the URL for the full review if you don't already have it: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/

I don't think that there is a way to change this on the camera.

Correct. While you have 3 resolution options, all are still in the 3:2 aspect ratio.

Is there a way to compensate for this in Quicktime?

This can probably be done in QT, but I am not a "power QT user like QTKirk and others you will find in this forum. I myself would be more prone to perform this "post processing crop" with an application like MPEG Streamclip. As to the quality of the result, that would depend on the actual work flow you used in creating the slideshow in the first place. Basically, there are two approaches:

1) For me, the best approach is to pre-process the original photos. The advantage to this is complete control in composing the subject material -- especially if you tend to take photographs in both portrait and landscape mode. In this case you compose the photos for content, crop them to a 4:3 aspect ratio, and scale them all to the same size (640x480 or larger) before creating the slide show. iPhoto normally attempts to do this automatically for you by scaling full frame height to 480 pixels. Since you have "black stripes" across the top and bottom of your slideshow, I suspect you are using a work flow that creates a slideshow by scaling photos based on their width. Neither approach is optimal since in the first case landscape photos are cropped horizontally in an "uncontrolled" manner while in the latter case portrait photos are cropped vertically the same way.

2) If, however, the current movie is satisfactorally composed and you merely wish to crop the black areas from your display area, I would simply run it through MPEG Streamclip (free) which contains a dedicated cropping tool. In this case, simply drop your slideshow movie into the work area, select output settings, click the crop box and enter the number of pixels to crop from top and bottom. Since you did not provide preferred movie format or method of distribution, I cannot be more specific as to settings at this time.

If interested and you have QT 7 installed, have prepared a sample slideshow using method described in paragraph 2 above. Since I don't know if you have a cable/DSL modem, used H.264 codec at half my normal video data rate and half my normal frame rate with mono rather than stereo audio. Display area was cropped to 320x208 which is best aspect ratio (nearest to 3:2) for most efficient H.264 encoding and which should guarantee removal of any "black" stripes.

http://homepage.mac.com/jrwalker4/.Public/Test_Slideshow.qtl

LoriEllen,

Am currently running some follow-up slideshow tests in iPhoto and was wondering which work flow your are using. If you are creating the slideshows directly from the "opening" screen, then this is likely your main problem as the output defaults to a 640x480 (4:3 aspect ratio) QT movie. If so, then use the "+Slideshow" button to create a "real" slideshow and to access more specific output options under the "Settings" menu. These include scaling of photos to fill the screen at the "Current Display", "4:3", or "16:9" aspect ratios. Best solution is to use a an output that avoids your initial problem completely. Of course, you may still come across some photos that do not "compose" as well as you like and pre-cropping these photos is still the best approach.

In any case, just thought I'd pass this on for whatever it is worth...