You can make a combined slideshow movie from more one album or sets within the same album with different music for each part using ProSelect and Apple's Quicktime Pro.

Here is what one client asked:

"We need to do a "reflections" slide show for a bride & groom to be played at their reception. The kind where you have a set of images of the bride growing up, then the groom and then the two of them dating with some portraits that we took at the end. Is there ANY way to make three slide shows play one right after the other ? Or are there any options to make one show using three songs of different lengths and having a specific part of the show start with each song ?

I'd like to put a separate song to each segment and, of course, none of the songs are the same length. Basically, I'd like to have a song for her growing up shots, one for his and then another for their together images."

Here is our suggested answer:

1. Use ProSelect's Export Quicktime Slideshow function (under the File menu) to create all three parts for the movie separately either from different ProSelect albums or by arranging your images into different sets within the same ProSelect album and building a different movie for each set. (You can select which set to use in the setup dialog box).
2. Before making each part, select the appropriate music in the Preferences. ProSelect's Export Quicktime Slideshow allows you to "sync" the music to the slideshow time however, in this case, you probably want to choose music that is "in proportion" to the length of the slideshow so each part does not have greatly different slide timings. Windows users note: Only choose .mp3 music files because Quicktime can't play .wma files.
   
3. Create an image that is completely black in Photoshop and add this to the album file as the last image so each movie part ends with a black frame.  You may also like to add a frame with your studio name to the end of the last movie and some title slides to the start of each part.
   
4. After you have exported all three movies, open them in different Quicktime player windows. To have more than one movie window open at the same time, choose "New Player"  (from the File menu in the player)  then select the movie using "Open File..."
   
5. For each movie AFTER the first do this:
   • Choose "Select All" from the Edit menu
   • Choose "Copy" from the Edit menu
   • On the first movie, move the position slider all the way to the right-hand side to set the insertion point at the end.
     
   • Choose "Paste" from the Edit movie
   • Repeat the above for the rest of the movie parts
6. Save the combined movie as a self-contained movie.

Note: We have tested all this on a Mac but believe that it should also work the same way on a Windows PC.

About Quicktime Pro

To edit movies the way we have described above, you need to upgrade your copy of Quicktime to the "Pro" version. To do this open the Quicktime player and select "Buy Quicktime Pro" (under the Quicktime menu on Macs and the Help menu on Windows). You will be taken to Apple's web site where you can purchase a registration key. The cost is around US$30.