How do I best make a wedding slideshow

Hi derhamm

First start by clearing space on your main HD of items you no longer need or back them up to an external HD or to DVD. You will need 20GB's of free space. Make sure you have at least this kind of available HD space on the HD you are booting from.

Secondly you can use iDVD6 for the slideshow presentation but I'd caution that you not exceed 99 images for reliable playback. Some set top dvd players have issues with anything over 99 images. Be careful not to exceed 99 photos.

Or consider investing in one of these apps that work well w/ iDVD6:

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

http://boinx.com/fotomagico/overview/

If you can't afford to shell out the cash for this additional software, and you have more than 99 images to present then make the slideshow as a QT movie in iMovie > iDVD6. Won't look as good but it will get the job done.

Hope this is Helpful.

If I were in your situation I'd back up my existing internal HD using Carbon Copy Cloner to the external firewire HD.

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

If the ext. HD is smaller than the internal then simply copy important or selected files to the external that you wish to back up the will allow for the needed / required HD space for iDVD6 plus an additional 20GB's working space.

If I use iDVD is there a way to edit pictures in the program? (crop, rotate etc)

I use Adobe Photoshop or in iPhoto => iDVD6 to do this.

Hope this is Helpful.

import your photos into iphoto. create an iphoto album then select the share tab and choose send to idvd. there are several wedding themes you can use. or
be different choose the drive in or reflection themes. its all good! after you have chosen your theme you can add your media. then you can burn a dvd with your wedding photos and music.

I only have like 512mb of memory.

That is probably your RAM. It's not a lot, but it is sufficient for creating a slideshow in iDVD. RAM (memory) is not the same as storage space.

...how do I know how much space I have?
In the Finder, click on the Macintosh HD (that's the default name) or icon for your internal hard drive. Then do File> Get Info. In the box that opens it will list your drive's Capacity, Available space, and Used space. What does yours report?

Before you get too far involved, please check that your external hard drive is correctly formatted for use with iMovie and iDVD. In the Finder, select the icon for the external hard drive. Again, do File > Get Info. What does it say beside "Format"? You want it to be "Mac OS Extended (journaled)". If it is not you need to use Disk Utility to reformat the drive. This will erase everything on the drive, so be sure to relocate any files that are on it before reformatting.

To free up space on your internal drive, you could move your iPhoto Library to the external. You simple copy the entire iPhoto Library folder to the external drive. Do not open that folder or remove any of the files inside it. Once copied, you hold down the Option key as you launch iPhoto. Click "Choose Library" then navigate to the iPhoto Library folder on the external drive. The library will open in the same condition as it was before the move. Once you're sure all is well in the new location you can delete the iPhoto Library folder on your internal drive. The caveat is that you will have to have the external drive connected and mounted in order to use iPhoto from it.

I may be able to help you with your difficulty in using iPhoto, but you will have to have sufficient free space on your internal drive to work on this project. Report back with your numbers and we can go from there.

I just started using a mac a few months ago and just recently made my first wedding slideshow.

1) make sure your pictures are the way you want it in iphoto.

2) use imovie to add pictures and music to create your slideshow

3) When your done creating, go to the top menu>share>idvd

4) Then in idvd pick your theme, create your menu and then when you're done click the circular "burn to DVD" button on the bottom.

I hope this helps

-Alex

as a teacher then could i have one external HD at school and one at home and have hte program keep all my info on both?

yes. It's possible. (make certain your ext. HD is formatted mac os extended & journaled). If it isn't currently then reformat thru apple's disc utilities ...btw ... reformatting erases the current content of the HD.

Have you attempted to boot successfully from the ext. HD?

Please confirm that you are able to boot to the external HD without issues.

Select the ext. startup volume from system pref's > startup disk and restart the computer.

what we need to do is make sure we can use the ext. HD as a boot drive. This mandates that the ext. HD be formatted correctly thru apple's disc utilities (please see above post).

ie, Click Here

The only way to rotate a photo for use in iDVD6 for example is thru a graphics program / PhotoShop / iPhoto. I personally do all rotating in adobe PS and sometimes in iPhoto (although iPhoto won't always stick /rotate as well in some cases, hence I prefer PS most the time).

derhamm, are your wedding photos already in the iphoto library? if they are you can create an album, select the pics and drag them to the album. bypass imovie. see the share option? choose send to idvd. piece of cake.