iDVD Slide Show Tip

This is a short little iDVD slideshow tip; nothing major but thought I’d share it. 

If you use iDVD to put together quick slide shows, you know there’s not a lot of control over the duration length of each slide. Your only option for duration is one that applies to all slides. So say you choose the “Fit to Audio” duration option. It will make each photo slide long enough to fit the length of the song you’ve chosen. But say you want the duration of some slide/image to last longer than others, such as the first and last slides.

Well, the way to do that is to click and copy the thumbnail of the photo that you want the longer duration for. Paste the copied thumbnail right in iDVD’s slide show editor where you made the copy. You can paste again for additional duration. The copy of the thumbnail will probably appear at the end of the collection of other thumbnail photos you have already dragged into the slideshow editor.

Now simply make sure all the copies of the duplicated thumbnails are arranged side by side. When you test run the slide show, using the Dissolve transition, the image you copied will last longer than the others.

This is a great way to ease viewers in and out of a slide show, rather than just having the first photo pop up and disappear in a few seconds.

While this method doesn’t allow you to assign specific time duration to individual slides, it does mean that you can still create a quick slide show in iDVD without much hassle.