Soundslides

Slidesounds Plus

To easily post my images on the web in the form of a slideshow, I downloaded a demo version of Slidesounds Plus (www.slidesounds.com).  This software was developed by photojournalist Joe Weiss for use by photojournalists.  There is a basic version and a “pro” version.   Although the website description doesn’t do a good job of distinguishing the benefits of the differences between verions, I downloaded the pro version to test.  I opted for the pro version because the price differential isn’t that great (basic is $39.95, pro version is $69.95) and it allows the user to launch a web-based slideshow without an accompanying audio file.  I’m a photographer, not a sound engineer.  I figure most of my time & effort at the front end will be spent on learning and perfecting the audio portions of my slideshows.  So I wanted to get to that as quickly as possible.  With the basic Slidesounds, you must have an audio file to get anything going.  The pro version allows you to just post the images, and then later add the audio (or not).

Slideshows is easy to master.  I shot my son’s basketball game, downloaded the images onto my computer, and went to work.  Within 2 hours I had a slideshow posted up on the web, along with a song that I converted to MP3 using iTunes as an accompanying audio file.  I followed the step-by-step directions posted at the Knight Digital Media Center (run by the UC Berkeley School of Journalism – see: http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/webdesign/using-soundslides/).   That’s an excellent resource that walks you through downloading Soundslides, creating a slideshow project, adding photos to the slideshow, converting a song to MP3 (compressed) format, and adding the song as a background track to the slides.  I have my own website (www.jtwdesign.com) and easily posted the files up there for testing purposes.   I suspect if you’re not proficient at working with websites the “publish to web” step may be the most difficult.  Actually generating the slideshow is a breeze.  I highly recommend the Soundslides product for ease of use.

Coming next:  Audio – Recording Tools