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Adding sound to a slideshow

Adding a soundtrack to a slideshow can enhance the mood or tone of the slideshow, provide information, or tell a story. You can use a song or entire playlist from your iTunes library, music you composed in GarageBand, and even a voiceover you recorded in GarageBand or some other application. You can also use any audio files that QuickTime supports (including AIFF/AIFC, Audio CD, AAC, MP3, WAV, and MPEG-4).

If you add audio to your slideshow, you can’t set the slideshow to advance manually.

To add a soundtrack to a slideshow:

Step 1

Double-click the button for your slideshow on the DVD menu to open the slideshow editor.

Step 2

Click the Media button to open the Media pane, and then click Audio.

Step 3

Click GarageBand to find songs in GarageBand, or iTunes to find music in your iTunes library.

Step 4

Drag a playlist or a song from the Audio pane to the audio well (shown below) in the slideshow editor.

You can also drag audio files from another folder on your hard disk or from a connected server to the audio well. The audio well icon changes from a speaker to one that corresponds with the type of file you added.

Image of the audio well in the slideshow editor
Step 5

The slide duration is automatically set to “Fit to Audio” to ensure that the slideshow and soundtrack finish at the same time. If you want to manually change how long each slide stays onscreen, choose the number of seconds from the Slide Duration pop-up menu.

When you do this, the slideshow and music may become out of sync, so it’s important to preview the slideshow to make sure you like it. Click the Preview button at the bottom of the iDVD window, which brings up the iDVD remote control. Click Exit in the remote control to return to the slideshow editor.

Step 6

Click the Return button to exit the slideshow editor.

If the Slide Duration pop-up menu is set to “Fit to Audio,” and the music is too short for all the slides and transitions, iDVD sets the slide duration to the smallest duration above 1 second that allows it to play or repeat the song completely.

If you add a playlist to the audio well, the songs play in the slideshow in the same order they appear in the playlist. If you want to change the order of songs, do that in iTunes and then add the playlist to your DVD again.

If you add movies that have audio to your slideshow, you can hear this audio when a movie is playing in the slideshow. If your slideshow has a soundtrack, the soundtrack fades out while the movie is playing so that the movie audio can be heard. This is a default setting (”Duck audio while playing movies”) in the slideshow editor, controlled in the Settings dialog.

To delete the audio from a slideshow, simply drag the music icon out of the audio well. To replace the existing audio, drag a new song or playlist into the audio well.

Related Topics

Adding sound to a menu

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