Hi,

Like John, I prefer to do it manually - but I make the slideshow video first and edit the music to fit.

A fade-out would be an option but personally I always ensure the music ending coincides with the end of the slideshow.  Which of course might include credits, fades, etc. The most obvious approach I take is to use music that is a bit longer than the slideshow and trim and fade in the start. If the music's start is essential then I cut it elsewhere, overlapping the sections at a point which coincides with relatively high volume in the other audio, either a video clip or my added microphone narrative.

My music library is kept on MediaMonkey and I typically sort my current 5,400 tracks by genre and then duration before browsing for a suitable choice. Sometimes, if the video is particularly long, I use several tracks, appropriately placed.

Thanks to both of you. I neglected to mention time is a huge factor in this case. I'm putting this together for the memorial service for my last brother who passed away Friday night after a 3 year battle with colon cancer. I didn't start it sooner because I've been staying here helping to take care of him. He had shown marked improvement after the first month I was here. I was cooking for him & he was eating & gaining weight. But I had to go back home 2000 miles away for my own doctor appointments. In the three weeks I was home his condition deteriorated rapidly. But I still thought I could help him recover again. I was wrong. He went from a weak lucidity to completely unresponsive in less than 72 hours.

All the while I wasn't thinking about a memorial service so I'm just getting this together. I'll work on editing the music selections down if there is no way to change a setting similar to the ones in the wizard to match the two up.

Thanks again for the tips.

Very sorry to hear of your loss.

Come back if we can help further.

Very sorry to hear of your loss.

Come back if we can help further.

My sincere thanks. I've gotten a reprieve of sorts, as bad as that sounds. I have an extra day to get this done.

I've gotten the times fairly close between the photos & the soundtrack- ~12 minutes & 13 minutes respectively. What I want to do now before I add the soundtrack is to create an end title frame to appear for those remaining 30 or so seconds. So far I'm not having any luck in doing that.

I've tried going to the "Title" tab, selecting "Standard" then dragging the "Default" title to the end of the last photo. That winds up with the title on top of every frame in the slideshow. I tried putting it on a separate track and it winds up with the title on top of every photo frame in the slideshow. The manual, in true Xara/Magix fashion is blissfully vague, contributing not even one useful tidbit of information to help me figure it out. As usual, for some reason, the way I think of finding a topic in the index is nothing even close to the way the writers of the manual choose to create said index.

Just to prove to myself that MEP MX is easier than PowerPoint, I tried creating this in that app & while the overall creation in that app is less irritating, attempting achieve effects like Pan or Zoom in PP make me want to remove the two appendages that are unique to the male of most species using, say, an ice cream scoop. 

So I am stuck in between two apps. Each does certain things much more easily than the other, yet both deny me the small satisfaction of generating a finished product that is anything more than a dull, amateurish pictorial review of the 58 years of my brother's too short life that any first grader could produce in their sleep.

Can you please tell me how to accomplish what, by all accounts, should be such a simple, brainless task: Insert one blank frame at the end of 120 frames, on which to place a few words, then display that frame after all the other frames for about 22:03 seconds.

PS. Yes, I am very frustrated. I've just lost my last sibling and my best friend & I just want to do this small & insignificant tribute. I never in a million years thought anything could be such an insurmountable, hateful undertaking.
 

My condolences on your loss.

Assuming that you have previously downloaded and installed all of the Free Addons (see under the Help tab), then go to Effects, Design elements, and look in Test images or Backgrounds for a suitable image to put behind your text. A text object has to be on another object, either an image or a video. Drag the image to the end of track 1 and extend it to match the end of the music. Select this object and create your text. Drag to text to match close to the length. I use scrolling text in cases like this. You can also overlay an image (PIP) or two at one side and move the text to scroll at the other side. In that case, you wouldn't need the background image.

My condolences on your loss.

Assuming that you have previously downloaded and installed all of the Free Addons (see under the Help tab), then go to Effects, Design elements, and look in Test images or Backgrounds for a suitable image to put behind your text. A text object has to be on another object, either an image or a video. Drag the image to the end of track 1 and extend it to match the end of the music. Select this object and create your text. Drag to text to match close to the length. I use scrolling text in cases like this. You can also overlay an image (PIP) or two at one side and move the text to scroll at the other side. In that case, you wouldn't need the background image.

Thanks so much!! OK, one final (I hope) question. I settled on a background object, a ,mxv object, to be specific. Everything's great except one thing. Try though I might, I cannot adjust the time on it to anything other than its default 15 seconds. Can those backgrounds not be adjusted?

You've chosen a video clip rather than a jpg as the image. Depending on which one, you can probably just copy it as needed and then trim it.

Which clip did you use?

Yeah, that's what I figured. The text objects were just too not what I was looking for. 

I chose "Stars Sky". 

So just copy & paste the frame? I'll give that a shot.

Just to make sure I'm not completely losing my mind, playing the slideshow within the program is simply a preview, right? I'm getting a lot of hiccups and stutters that should go away when I export the file?

One other thing I noticed. The slideshow ends at 13:00 minutes but there's an extra few seconds after that I have no access to. Upon exporting/burning, will that be removed?

Thanks so very much again!

Since I can't see your screen, and I don't have the same version on my computer anymore, I can only guess. Make sure that you are in Timeline mode and not Storyboard. Press on the End key. Then scroll down to make sure that you have nothing that shouldn't be there. You should have access to everything in timeline mode.

You can always adjust the length of the last image or 2 in timeline mode by dragging the right side out or selecting it and right-clicking and selecting Change photo length.

If you still have trouble, try posting a screen shot of the program and we will try to help you. 

Try doing an export at 720 resolution and look at the results. The stutters etc. should disappear. Watch carefully for anything that you don't like, note it and then fix it.

If you want to burn to DVD, then you have a new problem, deciding on a template. Alternatively, you can turn this off. Normally, a DVD starts with a startup screen, and then you press play or select a movie or a chapter. I suggest a couple of tests to make sure that it works.

Thankfully, once I was able to get over the hump of inserting a title/panel/whatever you want to call it, the rest was fairly intuitive. Again, I'm so grateful for all your help. The end result came out pretty good despite some fixable glitches & one that, again, has me cowed. 

His widow & 3 kids really like what I did. BTW, I'm using v 11.0.4.4.4 (UDC2) from 2012. If it's worth it, I might upgrade to 2015 Pro Plus the next time there's a deal.

The snafu that I'm stumped on is, for some inexplicable reason, when I added the text object on top of the MXV object, the process split the soundtrack at that point. 

Since the insertion, I have moved the text object back a bit so the end title first fades in over the last pic in the slideshow then remains on top of the MXV object.

Is there some way to rejoin the audio track or is it forever split because of the insertion of the video files, or two different object types?

Thanks, & I promise, this will be my last question on this subject. (For now, at least)

Jack

Hi Jack,

Good work.

Don't worry about the split audio file unless you trimmed something. You can split any object multiple times and there is no impact so long as nothing moves. If you really want to do this, delete the right object and drag the right end of the remaining part to the right, up to the end when there it won't go anymore. The entire object or file is always there, it's just that you are only asking the program to play the part that you have on the arranger. Even the right object that you erase is the entire file/object. Move it to a blank track and drag the left end towards the right to see.

Remember that MEP is a non-destructive editor. Your original files are never touched. The project is just a set of instructions telling how to use the files. That means that the files are not actually in the program or project, they are just used by it and have to remain available in the same location as where you fetched them. So do not delete the audio, video or image files from your computer. You can read up on this when you have more time.