Making a slide show with music playing in the background
Burn it to a CD or put it on a Jump Drive
This tutorial uses IrfanView, the free graphics program with the plugins installed. The music is in the MP3 audio format.
1. Open IrfanView and click on "File" --> Slideshow.
2. Navigate to your audio file and add the the audio file that you want to use.
3. Then add the images to be used in the order that you want them to play.
4. To test the show, click the "play" button.
5. Stop the show by pressing the Esc (Escape) key.
6. When you're satisfied with the show, set the "Advanced" options that you want.
7. When you're satisfied that it works correctly, click the "Save As EXE/SCR file". Note: the "SCR" part of the button is a screen saver option.
8. Choose the ".exe" option. That file when burned to a CD (or Jump Drive) will be the slide show.
Download a Sample Slide Show
Click on the link below and select "Save". You can save it to your Desktop, and then open it from there, or you can also just click on "Run", and play it directly. Once you're finished with the file, you can just *delete it as nothing is actually installed on your system.
You will see this icon on your Desktop.
Open it to run the slide show.
Audio_Slideshow Icon
Click the "Run" command and when the download is complete, the slide show with audio will begin to play. Be sure your speakers are on and if you're running Windows XP SP2, you will need to click the "Download File" option just under the address bar.
NOTE: To stop the playback, hit the "Escape" key on your keyboard.
This is a fairly big file due to the audio, so I only put in 5 small pictures, chosen at random. For your audio/slide CD you can put in many more images of any size you like. If you wish, you could also edit your audio so that it is one big long song...kind of like a medley of tunes popular during your school years.
For CD's, you can add an "Auto Run" file to make the CD begin play automatically when the CD is inserted into the CD-ROM drive. Download an Auto Run file
I plan to write quite a bit more about this process in the near future. but in the meantime, there is a series of posts at AnswerPool about this subject that you may find helpful.
*If you choose to just "Run" the file, you can delete the file from your Temporary Internet Files folder. To do that, open your Control Panel --> Internet Options and under the Temporary Internet Files listing, click the "Delete Files" button.
Questions:
"The problem I had was I put in my first song then the pictures that was to be showing during that song. It would play the song & no pictures until the song was done, then it would show the pictures with no song. When those pictures was done it would go to my second song & no pictures until that song was done. Ok what did I do wrong?"
Uncheck the "Loop" command in the Advanced Options.
Be sure you've downloaded and installed the plug-ins
Try this with MP3 files types only. I'm not sure but I think it would be troublesome to mix file types.
I think it would be easier to use an audio editor to create a "medley" of music that plays for about about the same time that your slides take to display. Download WavepadExample
If there are 60 images, and the slide show is set to show each image for 10 seconds, the slides will run for 600 seconds or 10 minutes. So if you make a single MP3 music file that is 10 minutes or very slightly less, your images will always have a music background as the slide show runs.
I put the MP3 Medley in the first position, then all the images. I only did this with MP3 file type and I don't know if it would work with other audio files, but it did work for me.
Question: How do I make a "single long playing audio file"?
Now, to try to answer the question...I used a downloaded program to "rip" 5 songs from a CD Audio track. This was from a disk that I have purchased, so this is not piracy.
The audio file on the CD was in a .cda format and I converted the files into the MP3 format and saved them to my hard drive. This file type conversion is part of the "ripping" process and you can open the Help file in the ripper program to get the steps: Look for "making your own MP3 from audio CD".
Then I opened an audio editing program that came with my Creative Labs Sound Blaster sound card. Using the File menu / Open command I opened the first MP3 file and then clicked on File/Open and opened the 2nd MP3 file.
In the second window, I clicked the Edit menu / Copy command to copy all of the 2nd MP3 file. I closed the 2nd MP3 file window and clicked into the first MP3 file window and clicked on the Edit menu / Paste command. You can use the "return to start" button to find the beginning of the song.
This action resulted in having 2 song files combined into one file. Then I repeated these steps, adding the other MP3 files, so I ended up with 5 songs in a single file. Doing a File menu / Save As command saved my new "medley" of music.
See a picture of this here.
This medley is 14 minutes, 45 seconds long; enough for 88 pictures with a display time of 10 seconds each. There are 2-seconds of silence between songs.
Since it is only one music file, you can set the "loop" for both the audio and the images to make it play continuously.
You can download trial programs of both the "ripping" software and the audio editing software. I used the trial version of "AltoMP3 Maker which you can find here. Since I originally wrote this, I found another audio program that I personally like better...Download Wavepad.
If you would like to look at other program options, try this Google search result page.
As mentioned, I used an audio editing program that came with my sound card, but again there are many trial applications you can use: See this Google search page.
Trial applications are programs that you can download and install and try them to see if it is something you want to purchase. Usually the trial period is for a set number of days or a specific number of uses. The audio ripping software for instance allows you to rip the first 12 songs from a CD. Then you must either purchase it or quit using it.
You can stop the show by pressing the Escape key.
Many thanks to the IrfanView author Irfan Skiljan, for his excellent program.
Download the graphics program "IrfanView". The download steps are similar, for most programs.
Click on the "Download" link on this page. The "IrfanView Home Page " window will open.
Read the IrfanView download tutorial
Note: Set the file associations. Open IrfanView --> Options --> Properties menu.
Do you have any questions about using your IrfanView program?
Perhaps I can help... Email to Dwight Blackburn
Interested in Other "How To..." articles?
This page last updated: May 11, 2006
