Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-06T11:19:42+01:00

How would I produce such a thing? It would consist of a succession 30 second images of a book page with a voiceover reading the text. And burn it to a DVD of course.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-06T16:24:29+01:00

you could probably do this using garage band. Mick demonstrated this at an earlier meeting.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-06T22:58:21+01:00

Thanks Lionel, I'll investigate.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T12:53:28+01:00

If you have a copy of Aperture I would this : 1 Record reading the book. 2 Create images of each page or part of page, 3 Load pages into Aperture 4 Load audio into iTunes 5 Using Aperture create a slide show while listening to the reading, switching page when required to 6 Take created file of images and voice and do whatever you want with it. To sum up I would use the voice reading the text as the driver and let the images support the voice.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T13:05:48+01:00

Thanks Derek, that looks jolly interesting. I've had a go with Lionel's suggestion, using iMovie HD and GarageBand and it sort of works, but not all that well.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T15:06:56+01:00

I used this technique in the following "movie" using still pictures. The images were selected to be in the correct sequence, ie Kathleen speaks, then Ernesto speaks. I then synced the picture change to the voices using Aperture Slide show using the soundtrack held in iTunes. https://youtu.be/T6e1WCpiSJE

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T16:01:21+01:00

VERY interesting Derek, exactly what I'm after. I think. I would need to import the pictures as jpegs or something else I can export as, from Affinity Photo. Now to see if I can down load Aperture from somewhere!

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T19:22:09+01:00

You could scan the pages however you have to consider how printed text can fit on a screen, the font has to be larger than a book, there has to be less lines on a screen and shorter lines, unless you plan to scroll the text up the screen. What age group is the project for? WHat is their attention span re page length and reading time.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T20:35:53+01:00

I am scanning the pages at the moment, importing them into Affinity Designer, deleting the existing text and inserting my own. Which is in Avenir Next Medium 12 on 15, aimed at age 7+, about 30 words on a busy page. Aperture is impressive, File — play slide show — gives me about three seconds per page and each page dissolves into the next, which is not what I want. I need at least 30 seconds per page, and no dissolving. I can't see any means of actually building and adjusting a slide show though, nor any means of burning it to a DVD.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T21:05:50+01:00

See Aperture Manual and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkH_9oov010 the video introduces transition control

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T21:08:12+01:00

and also https://youtu.be/25qU6CR5S8c

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T21:57:23+01:00

Thanks Derek, times three, but I'm definitely going to bed by 1a.m. You can stop it dissolving by selecting none in the presets but the maximum duration of a clip is 10 seconds unless, as you suggest, I control it with 'music'. WOW! 922 pages!!! See you tomorrow.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-07T23:00:07+01:00

One of the slide transition settings allows it to be set by clicking the mouse. So you can do this to suit the music or sounds. A pity you missed my chats on Aperture at the Fareham meetings about 6 years ago I also believe that you can do a similar thing in Lightroom but I have not got that far into the product yet.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T15:50:18+01:00

I made a superb slideshow in Aperture 3 but when I burn it to disc using Toast Titanium everything is out of focus. Help!

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T15:54:07+01:00

p.s. this happens with the m4v file produced by Aperture and also with the mp4 file converted with Handbrake. In both cases Toast asked me if I wanted to convert the content from NTSC to PAL and I did. I'm going to sacrifice another DVD and see if the result is the same with an NTSC disc.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T16:33:30+01:00

I would suggest you use a RW DVD I always did this to check everything was alright

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T16:45:04+01:00

I would if I had one Doug.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T16:59:17+01:00

They're both still rubbish but I don't think Toast is the culprit as both files are out of focus when played on the desktop.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T19:57:57+01:00

I've had a go with iSkysoft Slideshow Maker which is sort of good, but the colours are far too intense, clip duration is not adjustable, transitions are annoying, and the thing keeps zooming in and out. All this is possibly because its a free trial version, so I've emailed them.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-08T23:16:37+01:00

Just tried PhotoStage; really easy and quick to use, plus it will burn a DVD, which unfortunately is rubbish. Tried again on the desktop with the m4v file produced by Aperture and then the mp4 handbraked version; both are superior to all the other junk I've produced today, with the mp4 having the edge. Perhaps I've been over critical, perhaps Toast messes them up a bit, perhaps I'll muck about with Af Des and double the size of the page and of the typeface. Yawn.....

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-09T21:20:53+01:00

I've given up, Aperture is too complicated; even with the manual I can only make it work sometimes by accident.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-11T21:16:08+01:00

Dunnit! Only silent so far as I didn't want to complicate matters. Two days of struggling and cursing it have finally worked on Aperture 3. I'm not certain I could do it again mind... but it finally produced a good slide show on the desktop, which I converted to mp4 with handbrake, and which plays exactly as I want, with fairly acceptable quality of the text. BUT: burning it to DVD with Toast gives an unacceptable degradation of quality of the text. What are the alternatives? I don't mind buying an app if it does a good job.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-11T23:40:33+01:00

What format is Aperture's slide show file (what's its extension)? It would be good to minimise the number of transcodings so it's a shame that the Aperture file can't go directly to Toast. You may also be expecting too much? If your DVD is in video DVD format (so that it can be played on any DVD player), it's only TV Standard Definition which is pretty poor by computer standards (it's something like 700x500 pix from memory, and just stretched for wide-screen).

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-12T12:30:33+01:00

I'm ahead of you there Tony, I knew I could have done it years ago with film so I tried to get as close to that as possible. I set the scanner to output it as PNG, worked on it as PNG in Affinity ( at double the size of the book and double the size of the typeface ) and output it as that, which I imported into Aperture. Aperture then outputs it as an m4v file which VLC ten jumps in and plays laterally reversed, so I Handbraked it to mp4. I take your point about re-encoding and I've now worked out why that happened and instructed the Mac to open such files with Quicktime player. On my desktop I can't see any difference in the text definition between m4v and mp4, but then, my eyes are pretty old, so I'm now burning the m4v file to disc with Toast. ( which has to re-encode from NTSC to PAl ). Toast has just burned it very quickly indeed but the quality is appalling. I've also ordered a copy of Final Cut Pro on eBay which should arrive Thursday, mainly to see if I find it easier to use than aperture, and if the quality is better. Back to the grindstone!

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-12T14:04:03+01:00

Just burned the mp4 file and the m4v file to discs with Burn; the quality seems to be better, with the m4v possibly having the edge. Its hard to tell but theoretically it ought to be. (I think).

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-12T17:23:11+01:00

Thank you Tony, for pointing out the difference between a monitor and the average television, which had never occurred to me. When I played the disc on my DVD player the apparent quality was much better, and even the text looked good. Now to research making a soundtrack! I assume I will need to puchase a decent microphone and record directly onto the Mac?

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-13T10:52:13+01:00

Eric - see Graham Whent's post at the bottom of this page on here, it may help with quality.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-14T12:59:45+01:00

Hi Mick, I've tried that but didn't think much of it (possibly my own incompetence) and succeeded very well using Burn. When I put the disc in the player in the other room and watched it on a modern flat screen TV the quality of the text was superb, with (looking close up) every black character seemingly on a white background. With regard to the voiceover I found that I can video somebody reading the text and in iMovie HD extract the audio to the desktop, with the expectation of eventually adding it to the slideshow. Aperture says it can do this, but I've not yet succeeded in repeating my former success in creating and exporting a slideshow. Whoever wrote the manual should be strung up! Nevertheless I've come back on here to have another look at it; though I fear there may be something wrong with my brain.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-27T11:16:26+01:00

I've almost (sort of) succeeded. With a digital voice recorder and GarageBand I've made a superb soundtrack, which I can drop into the slideshow in Aperture 3. However, once in there it can't be deleted if its not precisely right. A bit like producing a book, when printing out a hard copy shows up errors or design faults you hadn't noticed on the screen. The soundtrack in GarageBand looks and sounds perfect, and the slideshow in aperture looks equally perfect, but when married together the positioning of a particular sound clip might need to be adjusted. If I do this by importing every clip separately its easy; I can just j j jiggle it a bit or delete it, create a new bit in GB and reimport the new one, but this is incredibly long winded. I prefer to make a complete soundtrack in GB and dump the whole thing into the slideshow but then I can't find a way to delete it. The only instructions I can find by googling the problem is to select the soundtrack in the browser and then delete it, but I can't find it in the browser, just the slides.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-27T16:37:57+01:00

Use the soundtrack as the master for determining when the pictures change, You can set the timing of the pictures by mouse click.. If you get the timing wrong you have to start again. However if you made the film in chunks so as to minimize the amount you would have to redo if you had a finger slip. Them use a movie editor to connect all the film show segments together.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-28T10:19:54+01:00

Correct about the finger slip Derek, a chap can lose hours of work that way! Its a very irritating program. What hapened was: I gave myself a stern talking to and did it the hard way, which took all day. With the complete soundtrack assembled in GB I saved it then deleted everything after page 1 and exported it to the desktop, went back to GB and clicked 'revert to saved'. Then deleted page 1 plus everything after page 2, exported to the desktop, reverted to saved, and so ad infinitum, remembering each time to drag the good page back to the beginning so as not to export a file that begins with a few minutes of silence. Then dropped them individually onto each slide, with great caution, being wary of finger slips as it is one hell of an unstable program. The result gives me a slideshow with voice, background noise and dead silence between each clip, which is not nice to listen to. So, back to the assembled soundtrack in GB where I can copy and paste clips consisting only of background noise onto a third track, and the result is good. Its a girlie way of doing things though, reminds me of my wife's idea of organising our holiday luggage.

Re: Slide show with voiceover?

2016-07-31T22:43:42+01:00

Well well jolly old WELL! You can indeed select the soundtrack, but not in the browser, in what I think of from my iMovie experience as the timeline. In the top left of this timeline is the name of the soundtrack; click on the name and it is selected, deleted, and replaced. Yippee.