SoundSlides Tutorial

By Michelle Johnson

Let’s see how easy it is to create an audio slideshow using

SoundSlides.

Before you get started, you’ll need photos and an audio track. You’ll
find a folder with practice files that you need for this exercise in
“Practice_Files.”

Once you have copied over the folder, open it and you’ll see a folder
and one file:

Pics – folder contains photos that you can use for this tutorial.
Audio – a generic music file that you can use for your slideshow. It
runs for 1 minute.

Overview
A shooting has been reported at a high school in Cleveland, Ohio.
You’ve been asked to put together a slideshow of wire photos coming
in from the scene.

You have more photos than you need, so you’ll need to edit your show
down to the 10 best shots.

You will use a program called “SoundSlides” to create your slideshow.

About SoundSlides
SoundSlides is a “rapid production” tool for creating audio slideshows.
It can combine an audio track and photos (jpg format only) into a Flash
slideshow without you having to know anything about Flash, HTML or
any other web coding.

What SoundSlides can’t do: Edit photos or audio. Any materials that
you use in SoundSlides must already be edited. Photos must be
corrected for color, contrasts, etc in a program like Photoshop.
However, you DO NOT have to resize your images. SoundSlides will
resize them to the correct size for your slideshow.

Your audio track must be edited to the proper length in a program such
as Adobe Audition or Audacity. Note: The length of your slideshow is
determined by the length of your audio file! If your audio track is 1
minute, your slideshow will run 1 minute.

Tip: It’s best if you place all of your edited photos into one folder and
your audio file into another folder. This will make it easier when you
import your files into SoundSlides.

Step 1:
Open SoundSlides (click the Start > Programs > Specialized Software >
SoundSlides).

Your screen should look something like this:

Click the “New” button and give your project a name:

Give your project a name and save it in your Local Workspace folder or
desktop.

Step 2:
You’ll then be brought to this screen:

Here’s where you’ll be instructed to import two things:

1) Your photos – JPG button
2) Your audio – SND button
Click the JPG button and browse to the folder where your photos are
stored in the Local Workspace folder.

The program will then import your photos.

When it’s done importing the JPG

button will have a green
checkmark on it.

Next, click the Sound button to import your audio. Browse to your file
in the Cleveland Exercise folder and choose “audio.mp3.”

SoundSlides will then import your audio and open your slideshow.

Your screen will look something like this:

You’ll see your pictures as thumbnails on the right. The selected photo
will appear enlarged on the left. You can drag and drop the thumbnails
on the right to reorder your photos.

To add additional photos to your slideshow you would hit “ADD IMAGE.”
To remove photos, drag the thumbnail to the “OUT” folder.

Note the timeline at the bottom of the screen. We’ll make some
changes to it later.

There are also buttons that allow you to Play, Test and Export your
slideshow, as well as a menu and tabs at the top of the screen for
changing various settings.

Step 3
At this point, you have more photos than you need for your slideshow.
Scroll through them and decide which you will keep and which you will
discard. Your goal is to CREATE A STORY, with a beginning, middle and
end.

To remove photos, drag the thumbnail to the “Out” folder. Edit your
photos down to a maximum of 10.
Tip:
To read the captions on each photo, click the “SLIDE INFO” tab:

Step 4:
Once you have selected your 10 photos, you need to clean up the
captions. They’ve come in “raw” from the wires and are much too long
to be used in your slideshow. Edit them down to a sentence or two.

Step 5:
Select a “look and feel for your slideshow using the settings under the
“Template” tab. Note that you can change the colors of your show, set
it to play or show captions automatically, select different fonts, etc.
You can also change the transitions between the slides, so for instance
you can have one picture fade out as another fades in:

Step 6
Once you’re happy with your “look and feel” (tip: click the Test or play
button on your timeline to preview), click “Project Info” to put a
headline and a credit on your slideshow:

Step 6:
Check your timing.

Look at your timeline. The length of your slideshow is ALWAYS

determined by the length of our audio track, in this case 1 minute.

If you want some pictures to appear on the screen longer, mouse to

the right edge of the photo in the timeline and drag it to the right to
play longer, or the left to play for a shorter time.
If you change your mind and want your photos evenly spread across
the timeline, click “Timeline” > “Spread images equally.”

Exporting Your Slideshow

When you’re done tweaking your slideshow you’ll have to save it in a

format that you can use on a web site. To do that, click the “Export”
button.

The program will then save a copy of your slideshow in the folder that
you specified when you first started the program.

Note: Your files will be stored in a folder called “Publish to

Web.”

To use the slideshow in a web site, you’ll need to move a copy of the
Publish to Web folder into the same folder as your web site. Be sure to
copy over the ENTIRE folder.
How do you get the slideshow onto a web page? Create a link to the
file called “index.html” in your Publish to Web folder.