Using iLife '11: Add Slideshows with Music to Your iDVD Project

1 of 8 in Series: The Essentials of Customizing an iLife '11 iDVD Project

Photo slideshows are reason enough to burn DVDs in iLife. You can send an already completed slideshow from iPhoto directly to iDVD or create a custom slideshow in iDVD. You can then rearrange photos, delete slides, or add more images from iPhoto using the iDVD Slideshow Editor, which offers tools for setting the slide duration, assigning transitions, and adding songs from your iTunes library.

If you created a slideshow in iPhoto, select the slideshow in iPhoto and select all thumbnails in the slideshow, and then choose Share→Send to iDVD. iPhoto prepares the slideshow for iDVD and then adds the slideshow to your project in iDVD automatically, or it opens iDVD and starts a new project if iDVD isn’t already open. A new button appears with the title of the slideshow as it was in your iPhoto library. You can also send a keepsake, such as a photo book, to iDVD as a slideshow.

To create a slideshow in iDVD, follow these steps:

Click the Add (+) button in the lower left corner of the iDVD window, and choose Add Slideshow from the pop-up menu that appears (or choose Project→Add Slideshow).

A new button, named My Slideshow, appears on the menu shown in the Viewer.
Double-click the My Slideshow button to open the Slideshow Editor.

The Media Browser also switches automatically to the Photos tab.
Drag events, selected photos, or albums directly from the Media Browser into the Slideshow Editor in the order you want for your slideshow.
To add music to your slideshow, click the Audio tab in the Media Browser, browse GarageBand or your iTunes library for a song, and drag the song to the Audio well (the Speaker icon) in the Toolbar section of the Slideshow Editor.
To set the overall volume of the audio, drag the Slideshow Volume slider in the Toolbar section of the Slideshow Editor to the right for higher volume, or to the left for lower volume.

The Slideshow Editor displays the duration of the entire slideshow in the upper center border of its window. You can switch the Slide Duration pop-up menu from Fit to Audio to, say, 10 seconds, and see what the duration of the slideshow would be. When set to Fit to Audio, the slideshow duration is very close if not the same as the song’s duration.
To set a transition between slides, choose one from the Transition pop-up menu in the Toolbar section of the Slideshow Editor.
To set the slideshow to play in a loop, or to add navigation controls or titles and descriptions, click the Settings button (with the Gear icon) in the Toolbar section of the Slideshow Editor.

The Settings dialog appears, with these options:
- Loop Slideshow plays the slideshow continuously.
- Display Navigation Arrows places left and right arrows on each slide that viewers can use to manually control the slideshow with their DVD remotes.
- Add Image Files to DVD-ROM copies the individual image files to the data portion of the DVD-ROM in addition to the slideshow being placed on the video portion.
- Show Titles and Comments displays each photo’s title and comment in the slideshow.
- Duck Audio While Playing Movies ensures that if the slideshow includes video clips with sound, the music or other type of audio you added to the slideshow plays at half-volume so that you can hear the video clip.