There are several Mac applications that will let you create slideshow movies with photos and music. Slideshow Magic from Koingo Software – a Canadian software developer – is one of those applications.

So what’s so special about Slideshow Magic 4? Hmm… Probably, none? In fact, that can be a good reason why people want to try it out. It’s easy to use. The learning curve is very low. Whether or not you are a first-time user, you can create a slideshow in a matter of a few minutes. So let’s see how it works.

After launching Slideshow Magic, you should immediately go to Preferences. Under the Segment Defaults tab, you can configure default durations of slides and transition effects. (See Screenshot 01.) If you don’t make default settings here, you will end up choosing a slide duration plus a transition effect and its duration for each slide.

Clicking on the Movie Defaults tab, you can make default export settings for the video track. (See Screenshot 02.) More precisely, whatever you decide under this tab, an audio clip used in a slideshow won’t be affected. We will get to that in detail soon. Anyway, clicking on the drop-down menu to the left, you can choose a video compressor. (See Screenshot 03.) If you don’t know which one to choose, pick JPEG. This selection refers to Photo JPEG. And the drop-down menu to the right presumably determines the video quantizer value. If you select High, then Slideshow Magic will throw away a relatively small number of bits in exporting a slideshow video.

Screenshot 01

Screenshot 02

Screenshot 03

If you are ready to move on, choose New under File. (See Screenshot 04.) Just drag and drop only photo files onto the application window. (See Screenshot 05.) You can’t drag and drop audio clips in the same manner. So be careful.

Screenshot 04

Screenshot 05

Screenshot 06

Now, if you see Screenshot 06, the Segment tab is selected. Everything is already set up according to the default settings. At the bottom of the window, you see plus and minus signs. Click on the plus sign to attach an audio clip. A particular segment or slide has been selected. And I don’t want to attach an audio clip to an individual slide. Instead, I should click on the Movie tab and then import an audio clip for the entire slideshow. (See Screenshot 07.)

Screenshot 07

Screenshot 08

Screenshot 09

In my case, the duration of audio is only 16 seconds. So I should check in the box for Loop Audio so that the same audio clip will be used repeatedly. By the way, we’ve tested three different audio formats, which are AIFF, MPEG-4 (M4A) and Ogg Vorbis (OGG). Slideshow Magic supports all these 3 audio formats.

Anyway, clicking on the Segment Title tab, I want to display a slideshow title at the top of each slide. So I select the first photo file and enter a title under a text box that says Name. (See Screenshot 09) If you don’t want to display a title for a particular slide, then you can check off the box that says ‘Display the segment title.’

Finally, I’m ready to export a QuickTime slideshow. So I press the button at the bottom that says Build. You will see a message window asking if you want to flatten the movie. (See Screenshot 10.) And I should press ‘Yes’ because I want to post it under this article.

Screenshot 10

Screenshot 11

Screenshot 12

Okay. So I exported a slideshow movie. Seeing Screenshot 11, I notice 2 things. No. 1, Slideshow Magic doesn’t compress audio. I used an audio clip whose format is Ogg Vorbis. Looking at the Movie Inspector, it still says Ogg Vorbis. If I give this slideshow movie to someone else, he or she is unlikely to hear audio unless they have a QuickTime audio plug-in for Ogg Vorbis installed. In the meantime, if I use an AIFF audio clip and export a slideshow… The audio track is intact. (See Screenshot 12.) It’s AIFF.

No. 2, I only have 6 slides. Each photo is a mere size of around 120 KB. But my slideshow movie has a file size of 57.96 MB. That’s quite big. If I export a 6-photo slideshow movie with H.264, the file size is 54.22 MB. (See Screenshot 13.) That confirms that there is no interframe compression. In other words, the keyframe must be 1. That’s why the data rate can be as big as 6,746 kbits/s.

Screenshot 13

Screenshot 14

We like the idea of making slideshow movies easily and fast. You can create a slideshow movie in a matter of a few minutes with Slideshow Magic if you have photo and audio files to import. You don’t have to know much about audio or video compression when you use Slideshow Magic 4.

Another good thing about Slideshow Magic 4 is its support for transition effects. As shown in Screenshot 14, there are so many transition effects. As I count, there are 137 transition effects besides Crossfade and Random effect.

Okay. There are a couple of negative aspects that we observe. No. 1, you can’t preview your slideshow. It’s nice to have so many transition effects. But you can’t tell exactly how each of these transition effects works. Another thing is that there is no easy-in/out setting for audio. As you watch a slideshow sample below, audio starts and ends abruptly. Another thing… Slideshow Magic 4 doesn’t support the Ken Burns Effect, which even iPhoto supports.

Slideshow Magic 4 doesn’t compress the audio stream. And it also appears that there is interframe compression. So Slideshow Magic creates fairly big files. Inevitably, you may have to use QuickTime Pro to re-compress your slideshow movies.

MacHouse recommendation: The price is quite reasonable. If you just want to create a slideshow movie in 2 or 3 minutes even without knowing much about video editing, Slideshow Magic 4 will be a nice application to have. If you post your slideshow movies at your website, you will probably want to use QuickTime Pro to shrink the file size.






The following sample is presented as it is. And we did not use QuickTime Pro or any other application to reduce the file size.

Click on the button watch a sample slideshow movie.






Slideshow Magic is a product of Koingo Software.

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