How to add Voiceover to your FotoMagico Slideshow
NOTE: This tutorial is slightly out of date, dealing with older versions of FotoMagico and GarageBand, but the principle is still valid and working with FotoMagico 2.x and GarageBand 4. We will update the tutorial as soon as possible.
Contents
- Preliminaries
- Preparing for Export
- Adding Voiceover to your Slideshow
- Reimporting to FotoMagico and further editing
- Modifying the Soundtrack
Like a good movie, a great slideshow lives by a great soundtrack. Adding music, sound effects and a spoken comment to your slideshow really makes all the difference.
A lot of you are already aware of this and requested it loud and clear. With FotoMagico 1.7, you can use Apple's Garageband 3 to create a cool soundtrack for your slideshow. This tutorial shows you how.
0. Preliminaries
You'll need GarageBand 3 (included with iLife '06) and FotoMagico 1.7 for this tutorial.
Before you start, you need to tell GarageBand that it needs to include an "iLife preview" when saving projects so that you can use the soundtrack directly in FotoMagico. To do this, please set GarageBand's preferences as follows:
Bring up the preferences dialog by selecting Preferences from the GarageBand menu. Click on the General tab, if it wasn't already selected by default.
In the bottom area of this window, make sure you checked the iLife Preview checkbox.
Also make sure input and output device match your current hardware setup. For example, if you want to record a spoken commentary, make sure you selected an available input device, e.g. built-in microphone or an external one that is attached to your computer.
1. Preparing for Export
Now, create a slideshow in FotoMagico. As you probably know, you can easily add a sound to your slideshow by selecting a song from your iTunes Library. With FotoMagico 1.7 you can also drag a sound file from the Finder to the soundtrack area of the FotoMagico Storyboard.
However, at present, only one audio track is permitted. This means that audio commentary, sound effects and music need to be in one file already mixed down.
With GarageBand there is a great application that is part of iLife which does a very good job at creating soundtracks. Apple has added tools specifically for voice recording in GarageBand 3 as well as a wealth of royalty free music and sound effects. The idea is that GarageBand will become the tool for editing soundtracks in iLife. FotoMagico 1.7 taps into this resource for your soundtrack needs.
GarageBand 3 has a new project type called "Movie Soundtrack" which you will use to create soundtracks for your slideshow. So, you need to export your slideshow as a movie, create a new movie soundtrack project in GarageBand and import your slideshow as movie into the new project. FotoMagico does all that for you:
In FotoMagico, select Export from the File menu. In the following dialog choose the preset for GarageBand.
Note: In FotoMagico 2.x, press the Alt key while choosing "Share (Export)" from the File menu. The menu entry will change to "Export".
Also make sure the checkbox Open in is set. Choose name and location for the movie to be created and confirm by pressing Export.
FotoMagico will now start to render a QuickTime movie at the location you specified, launch GarageBand and open the exported movie in a new document window named after the exported movie file:
Note: If your FotoMagico document doesn't contain an audio track, you may see a warning message when GarageBand opens the document. Discard the message by pressing OK and proceed with chapter 2.
2. Adding Voiceover to your Slideshow
When exporting your slideshow to a QuickTime movie has finished, you will be presented with a new GarageBand document.
GarageBand will split tracks contained in the QuickTime movie according to their contents. In other words: The image feed will be placed on a video track, audio that you may have already inserted in your FotoMagico slideshow gets put on a separate audio track. To see a small live movie preview in GarageBand, click the Information button at the bottom of the window.
In order to record a commentary, create a new track in GarageBand by choosing New Basic Track from the Track menu.
For the newly added track make sure that the Record button is activated (this is being symbolized by the small red dot as shown in below figure). Also make sure that you have chosen the proper input device in the GarageBand Preferences.
To start recording your voiceover track, press the Record button next to GarageBand's main 'band transport' controls. Alternatively press the R-key on your computer's keyboard.
Note: In order to achieve a 'radio style' voiceover you may want to consider using the Ducking feature that was introduced with GarageBand 3. This will automatically lower volume of other audio tracks as soon as you start recording speech and increase volume of complementary audio tracks when you pause your commentary. For further details, please see GarageBand's documentation.
When you've finished adding and editing additional audio tracks, your document window may look like this:
Choose Save from GarageBand's File menu. This will create a GarageBand project file. Because you chose to include an "iLife" Preview, a stereo mixdown of your tracks will get bundled with the video track.
3. Reimporting to FotoMagico and further editing
Next step is to add the audio to your FotoMagico Slideshow. For this, you need to find the GarageBand Project file in the Finder. By default, GarageBand creates its file in a folder called GarageBand inside your user's Music folder.
Make sure that you remove the original audio track from FotoMagico's storyboard. It will be replaced by the new file from GarageBand, containing your previous audio track along with your voiceover and/or additional music or audio effects.
Shrink FotoMagico's application window in a way that allows you to see the container of that document simultaneously and drag the GarageBand document icon to FotoMagico's storyboard.
With the mouse button pressed, drag your GarageBand document to...
...the FotoMagico storyboard.
After placing your new audio track in your FotoMagico document, you can of course apply further editing, e.g. add more slides and titles, replace existing images, modify transitions etc.
In fact, you might go as far as to start the procedure all over, keeping only parts of your slideshow and modifying or complete doing over the audio track. In this case, proceed to chapter 4.
4. Modifying the Soundtrack
Let's assume you have completed chapters 1 through 3, but want to do a new voiceover or adjust the audio to better match your modified slideshow. In this case, you do not want to create a new GarageBand document because you want to have your original sound work preserved. (The file you export from FotoMagico will only contain a downmixed version of your soundtrack, not the original tracks separately.)
To achieve this, save your FotoMagico document and repeat the export procedure as described in chapter 1, however this time leaving the Open in GarageBand checkbox unchecked. You are free to either keep the audio or completely discard as you have a complete copy in your original GarageBand file.
Note: If you don't uncheck the Open in GarageBand checkbox, your previously used GarageBand document will be closed, prompting you to save it or discard your changes. Careless operation at this point may result in loss of previous work with regard to audio editing.
After FotoMagico has completed the repeated export process, locate the newly exported file in the Finder and manually drag the exported movie into your existing GarageBand document.
If you have removed audio from your FotoMagico slideshow prior to exporting a second time, you will see a warning that you may safely discard by pressing OK.
Dragging the exported movie containing the new video track into the GarageBand document will effectively insert a new video track. The video track now contains all the modifications you have made to your FotoMagico slideshow after chapter 3, e.g. new titles that you decided to place on your slides:
At this point, you are free to either record completely new audio, keep some of the previously recorded materials and or add effects and ambient sounds. After having completed further audio editing, save your document and place it in your FotoMagico document as previously described.
Repeat as necessary to create your perfect slideshow.
