I've been working long and hard on an MG club project. I have several hundred photos organized by years in to a slide show movie using Picasa 3. The slides include names, places, etc. When done it will be a Windows Media Video (WMV) file that can be burned to a CD. The program allows for 'one' audio file. Naturally because of the length it needs a lot more than one song. I don't download music, so I was wondering if you can suggest how we can add background music when it's limited to one file?

 

Roy <Canberra> is da man! Where are you , Roy?

 

Dave,

I have never used this software but here is a link to a forum discussing your issue

[ Picassa 3 Forum

Do you have Microsoft Movie Maker? That program has limitations but I have done many videos with multipe sound tracks per movie using it.

 

Dave -

Afraid I can't be much help with Picasa, but I have used Photodex's "ProShow Gold" rather extensively.

My only thought about the 'single track' issue with Picasa is perhaps you can select a lo-o-o-o-o-ng track and loop it for continuous play. Has to be a long one though, as with a couple hundred slides I would imagine your show is at least 30 minutes long.

As for "ProShow Gold", you can download a fully functional trial copy that will work for 15 days from the Photodex site (www.Photodex.com). Any shows you build and save as an '.exe' file will continue to be usable. The software cost about $70 if you choose to buy it (you don't need the features of their 'Producer' program, just stick with 'Gold')

ProShow Gold will allow you to have full "Ken Burns" capabilities (zoom, rotate, pan), you can adjust the timing of images and transitions individually, and you can synch all or part of the show to a music track. You can also tweak the images.

I don't like to download music either, but if you can create a ''.wav" or other audio file from a CD in your collection, you can dump it into ProShow.... and you can use as many tracks as you want. Only drawback to ProShow is that it only works on a PC.... not Mac happy.

Depending on how fussy you get about the final result, it is easy to put more time into creating a 30 minute presentation than one might care to admit.

Hope this helps!

 

dave the other option is to concatenate the mp3 files and feed those to picassa how to concatenate

I haven't tried this myself but it might be worth a go.

 

Dave, have you club sing songs while the slide show plays.

 

Dave,

Roy's suggestion may be a good one. May I suggest Pachelbel's Canon in D Major. It should be fairly easy to loop and starts and ends about the same way so it should seem fairly seamless as people watch the images.

Hmmm, Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie would almost get you there at 27 minutes in length.

There is always the immortal "100 of bottles of beer on the wall"

Good luck with this and let us know how you solved this issue.

 

Thanks everyone for your good suggestions. Roy, since I'm sorting through photos from 1955-2008 I already have many hours envolved, so a few more doesn't matter. Trying to come up with individual names and the year (since it's in order) has been the really tough. Cameras were not like they are today, so many of the pictures required enhancement. I can appreciate all your efforts Roy in the projects you've done. Matt, I can't imagine 30-45 min of the same song in a loop no matter how good it is. LB, I can't afford enough beer to keep the club singing. Others, thanks for the links..... I will look at them all.

 

Audacity: The open source sound editor

Just get all the songs you want and splice them into one, cross fading or whatever. Then export one WAV or MP3

It only takes a few minutes, if you know how to do it that is I can throw it together if you want to email me the MP3s. I couldn't suggest the music, it might be all techno.

 

I have Audacity software loaded already (to use with a ION USB turntable). I have had the setup for a year but never got around to using it; the grandkids trashed the needle. I ordered two needles today.

If I can I'd like to record some of my old 33's songs to go along with period slides. I did experiment a little bit with it after I first got it and I have some idea as to how it works. I got a frustrated trying to remove the scratching sounds from the old couple platters I tried. I plan to give it a new try.

I've no idea what an MP3 is other than it holds a lot of songs..... my age is showing, right! Thanks for the offer and encouragement.