For this tutorial we will be using Picasa to create a simple video slideshow. This will enable people to make their own videos for their music for free. Picasa is a free photo organizer from google. It is available for windows, mac and linux. (The Windows version is available in 40 languages including Arabic. The Mac version is only available in English. On a Mac you can do the same thing using iMovie which comes free on all new Macs.) If you do not already have Picasa installed, you can download it for free at http://picasa.google.com/. This tutorial assumes that you already have Picasa installed on your system, and that you have your photos imported into Picasa. This tutorial uses Picasa 3.1 on Windows XP but the directions should be similar on other platforms as well.

Choosing Photos

The first step to creating your slideshow is to create a new album to store your photos in. In Picasa click on the “File” menu and select “New Album”. This will open a dialog asking you to name the new album. You can name the album whatever you want. We will name ours “Slideshow Tutorial”. Now scan through the photos you have in Picasa to find which ones you want to include in the video. When you find a picture that you want to use, right click on the image, go to the “Add to Album” selection on the context menu and select your new album from the sub menu.

Most slideshows have each picture stay up for about 5 - 10seconds. To determine how many photos you need in the album, you should see how many seconds long the audio track is and divide that number by how long you want each photo to be displayed. The result is the number of photos you should add to you album.

After you have all the pictures you want in your album, make sure they are in the order you want to display them. (You can do this later if you change your mind, but it is easiest to do it at this point.) You change the photos order by clicking on the photo you want to move and, without releasing the mouse button dragging the photo to the correct spot in the album.

Making the Slideshow

After you have the pictures in the order you think you want them, it is time to make our slideshow. To start this, click on the “Create Movie Presentation” button at the top of the album.

Clicking this button will take you into the “Movie Make” tab of Picasa. In this tab, there are some video options on the side. (We will go over this soon.) The majority of the screen is the preview area that lets you see what the video will look like if you were to save it right now. At the bottom you have a slide timeline. In this timeline you can drag the slides around to change their position, remove slides you decide you don't want, or add text slides.

Movie Options

In the movie options section on the side is where we add our audio track for the slideshow. Click the “Load” button, and use the file selection dialog to choose your audio track. Picasa allows you to use either *.mp3 files or *.wma (Windows Media Audio) files. After selecting your audio track, you can change how the images are fit to the audio track. We will choose “Fit photos into audio”.

Next we select our transition style. This determines what effect will be used to display each slide. You can play around with the different options and choose which one you like best. We will select “Pan and Zoom”.

We also need to determine what size our video will be. You don't want to make the video larger than your images, or they will look fuzzy. The larger the dimensions, the longer it will take to create the video, and the more space it will take on your hard drive. We will make our tutorial video 640x480.

We also want to make sure the “Show Captions” box in unchecked. (We don't want any captions we have put on our pictures to show up in our slideshow.) We want to check the “Full frame photo crop” box. (This will make sure that we don't get any black edges in the slideshow if some of our pictures are different sizes or vertically orientated.)

There are more options to explore if you want on your own, but this is enough for our example video. Use the play button in the preview area to make sure your video looks the way you want it. When everything is ready, click on the “Create Movie” to export your video. After it is finished be sure to upload it onto Yallafan.net so you can share your creation with the world.

Yallafan Team

Video Note:

Before you begin, make sure your photos are imported into iPhoto. Many times, iPhoto will automatically start when plugging your device into your Mac. Simply follow the instructions to complete your import. At the very least, make sure you can find your photos somewhere on your desktop. While having your photos imported into iPhoto makes creating your video with iMovie much easier, iMovie allows you to click and drag your photos from your photos folder directly into the program’s movie timeline.

Audio Note:

The same applies to your audio! While you can simply drag and drop your audio file into iMovie, it is easier to already have your audio files imported into iTunes.

Exporting Note:

To upload your movie to Yallafan.net, you will need to save your music video as a .mov file. To do this, you will need QuickTime. You can download a free version of Quicktime from Apple at: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Let’s begin.

Check your Dock for iMovie; if iMovie is in your Dock, just click on the iMovie icon to launch the program and proceed to step #4. If iMovie is not in your Dock, begin with step #1.

1. Open your Hard Disk Folder
2. Open Applications Folder
3. Start iMovie
4. Click on the Camera Icon in the grey bar. A browser will appear in the lower right hand corner of iMovie.
5. Click the triangle located beside iPhoto to display the menu. Your iPhoto pictures will appear in the browser.
6. Select the photos you wish to include in your music video by dragging them from the photo browser and dropping them into the project window. The project window is located in the upper left hand corner of iMovie.
7. You can change the order of the photos by simply dragging them around in the project window. To remove a photo, select it and press the Delete Key on your keyboard.
8. To add music to your movie, click the Music Note Icon in the grey bar.
9. Click the triangle located beside Garage Band or iTunes to select your music from their menus.
10. Click on the song you want to use, drag and drop it into your music video. The music will show up as a green background along the photos in your Music Video.
11. Click on the play button to see your very own music video.
12. Edit the photos and the audio as you see fit.
13. Click the “Share” tab.
14. Select “Export using QuickTime” from the “Share” dropdown menu.
15. Name your music video.
16. Choose the location you wish to save your Music Video at the “Where:” prompt.
17. At the “Export:” prompt – select “Movie to QuickTime Movie”
18. At the “Use:” prompt – select “Default Settings”
19. Upload your Music Video to yallafan.net

There are many options and effects contained in iMovie. Be sure to explore iMovie's many editing features including Titles, Themes and Transitions! Have fun!

Yallafan Team