Digital Photography Hacks

Add Music to Movies and Slideshows

Music makes everything better, especially in the background of your digital movies and slideshows.

If you don’t think music makes a big difference in media presentations, just turn off the sound during a movie and see how interesting it isn’t. “Sound is half the picture” is an old saying in Hollywood . This is just as true for your digicam movies and slideshows.

QuickTime Pro allows you to add as many soundtracks as you have the patience to manage. Generally speaking, movies have two soundtracks—dialog and background music—and slideshows have just one—background music. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, however. You could, for example, add a voiceover to your slideshow [Hack #60] . But let’s focus on background music at the moment. I’ll use a slideshow as an example project.

After you create a digital slideshow [Hack #54] , you need to find some music to go with it. Just about everyone these days has a digital music collection on their computer, usually in the MP3 or AAC format. You can open any of these tracks in QuickTime Pro. If you don’t have any music on your computer, it’s easy enough to convert a CD you have in your collection by using a number of free digital jukeboxes available for download. I like iTunes, for both Mac and Windows, and you can download it (free!) at http://www.apple.com/itunes/download.

Once you’ve found the music you want to use, launch QuickTime and open your slideshow. Then, open your music in a second player, as shown ...