Music Medleys

It's easy to do this if you have an audio editing program or the ability to edit audio in the program you're using to produce the slideshow (what are you using?). I don't think you can do this in iTunes--it's not an audio editor! (Keep in mind that you won't be able to use purchased iTunes songs in any slideshow/movie production. You'll have to reimport in an unprotected format to make these tracks usable.)

I've made slideshows using Abode Premiere software and I was able to edit the music using cuts/crossfades to get the right transitions. However I do not recommend using this software for slideshows--it's not easy to work with and importing photos/converting to DVD format was time-consuming and quite challenging! I also have Sony's SoundForge software--you can make precise edits with this program--but getting it exactly right for a slideshow/video is a challege if you don't have a way to run visuals while you're making the edits! Being able to edit inside the slideshow program is by far the best solution!

Explore the slideshow production software you're using and see if there's any audio editing capabilities built into the software. It there is, then you can just drag songs to the timeline and cut/fade at will. One small hitch--if your songs are in a digital format that the program can't recognize, you may have to convert them to an acceptable format first before you can work with them.

I have not used this for a slideshow--so I'm not making a personal recommendation, but Microsoft Office Powerpoint has an add-in program (Microsoft Producer for Powerpoint) that you can download for free if you own Powerpoint 2003. (Check out Microsoft's downloads page--search for "Producer for Powerpoint".) This program sounds like it has the things you're looking for. You could check this out.

I feel for you, we promised to do the family "slideshow" for Christmas eve entertainment two years ago. I used Adobe Premiere to produce this show--every photo had to be sized, cropped and adjusted to fit the screen--it was laborious. (over 200 photos if I remember correctly.) It took days just to get the photos ready for sound and transition effects. But, once we had this in the program the music, voice overs, transistions and titles were a breeze to add and we were able to produce nice DVDs for the whole family. Unfortunately, we didn't realize the photos would take so long--so our Christmas eve presentation for the family was handled via our video camera--we didn't have time to transcode everything to burn a DVD. The DVDs came later as a new year's non-surprise. Oh well--it was family and we were free, what can I say?

Two years later--it's a great slide show to go back and look at. Maybe it's like childbirth--no one remembers the actual pain to produce it!

If I think of any other slideshow programs people have recommended to me, I'll post back.

Thank you for not being my son and reminding me every minute that "we should have bought a Mac! Apparently Apple's slideshow software is pretty intuitive and wonderful." If I can make one small snide comment about it, though, DVDs produced by this program don't work in low-end DVD players. Maybe all Apple owners have sophistocated multi-media equipment so they'd never know their low-rent relatives can't play the DVD slideshows they produce in their bargin-basement DVD players! After I got one of these Mac slideshows from my brother-in-law I was forced to go out and buy a high-end DVD player so my daughter could view it. (It always worked on my computer DVD drive--so I knew the problem was my stand alone player.)