# Keynote slideshow>iMovie>iDVD?



## Roger (Sep 6, 2002)

So I am working on a slideshow in Keynote for my father-in-law's birthday, and we're into the final week before showtime. 

The in-laws want to add music for different sections of the show, ie: music#1 for the first 20 slides, music#2 for the next 12, music#3 for the next 10, etc etc. As far as I can tell, I can't do this in Keynote - I can either do one music piece for the whole show, or add little sound bites to one slide. Is this right?

The only solution I know is to export as a movie file and edit the thing in iMovie, adding the appropriate music where necessary there. Then, either just playing the movie at the event, AND/OR export to iDVD and make a DVD to play (and for posterity for any of the attendees at the event).

(I was wondering if Keynote had some time indications so I could find out when certain transitions happen, and perhaps edit the music separately, make one piece out of it and then just add it to Keynote. But, not as far as I can tell...)

Anyway, back to the export as a movie. I built the slideshow as 1024x768, which is the resolution of the projector we are using. However, if I export this from Keynote at that size, will iMovie just downsample it to its 640 (720?) x480 resolution? Or what setting should I use when building the iMovie project? I did a quick test of part of the show and the crispness of the Keynote presentation got a bit blurry once in iMovie...

Or, use iMovie to assemble the music and export just the music and put it back into Keynote?

And then, what settings for iDVD?


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I believe you are correct. You can't do precisely what you want to do. Your choices are:

Individual Music for each slide.
One music selection for the entire slideshow.

Your best solution is to combine all the music you want to use into one track (use GarageBand or Audacity).

Your massive-mix, multi-song track will be your "whole presentation" music. Then just go it, and set your slideshow timers so everything syncs up.


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## Oakbridge (Mar 8, 2005)

I am just playing around with this stuff now but I think that the best solution would be to create the entire presentation in iMovie. I have been able to put multiple songs into one soundtrack. I've even been able to do some pretty precise editing of the length of the songs (for example I was able to hit Eric Clapton's original Layla starting right at the piano chord that begins the instrumental part).


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

The problem with taking it into iMovie is that you lose a lot of resolution. You are limited to 720x480 (DVD resolution) whereas keeping it in Keynote, you can run your presentation at a much higher resolution.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

guytoronto said:


> The problem with taking it into iMovie is that you lose a lot of resolution. You are limited to 720x480 (DVD resolution) whereas keeping it in Keynote, you can run your presentation at a much higher resolution.


What about importing the quicktime into a 720p iMovie project? I wonder if that would maintain quality? I have created a couple of iMovie "slideshows" at 720p and they look really nice -- better, it seems, than a standard DV project, even when you squash both down to MPEG2 via an iDVD burn. Your post is right in that, not only is frame size an issue, but data rate (kb/s) is a biggie as well. iMovie's default bit rate for 720p is higher than it is for standard DV.

Also, keep in mind the differences between a computer monitor and TV monitor. Things that look a little fuzzy on the comp turn out better when played through a TV. Given that the OP is going with an LCD projector, however, this may not be the case and playback through Keynote or Quicktime Player (or FrontRow? Sweeeeet) could be the best way to go for playback.

For creating the music edit, I would say that the best way to go is to just use a copy of the picture within iMovie to create an accurate soundtrack to the picture, then use that audio edit in Keynote:

1) Export finished pic out of Keynote
2) Import into iMovie
3) Edit your music in context to the picture
4) Export the finished audio track out of iMovie (Quicktime, Expert Mode, Sound To AIFF)
5) Import into keynote
6) If all is well, once and for all, then quit iMovie and trash the iMovie project

Alternatively, steps 2 thru 4 could be done by opening the originally exported movie into Garageband. You can then add Garageband reverb or other effects (even a cymbal crash) if you need to "taper" any hard edits in the music, and you have better visual command over your music editing.


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## mcdermij (Oct 13, 2006)

I'm not sure how familiar you are with iLife but there are some nice step by step tutorial video's offered on the apple site.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/

I found them helpful when I was learning the basic ins and outs. Shows you how to import a slideshow into imovie and how to add music tracks etc. You can crossfade the different tracks to play when you want them so you could get them to play for the amount of slides you want with little effort.

Hope that helps. Be warned, imovie can eat up A LOT of your time rather quickly.


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## KardnalForgotHisPassword (Oct 14, 2004)

maybe I'm missing something, but why not just make the slides jpg's, and then do the whole thing in iPhoto?

Make a slideshow in iPhoto with all your slides, and then just set the slideshow to an mp3 file you've created, which switches music at the appropriate times, and sync the slideshow to that.

Wouldn't this be the easiest way?


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

It's an easy way, but it might not be the best way depending on the ambitions of the author.

Also, the author wants different music for different sections, and the performers' song length of those various pieces of music may not conform to the length desired by the author. Therefore, if the picture is already done in keynote, and the author wants specific musical events or changes throughout the video, then the music has to be "cut to the picture". Exporting the movie out of Keynote -- even a lo-res version -- loading it into Garageband and slicing that music up while hearing it _in context to the picture_ is probably the most effective approach given their needs.


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