Hey all,

I have to put together a slideshow that I need to either be able to convert into a YouTube video or host for a nominal fee somewhere so that it can be embedded on a website and viewed for years to come.

I need the ability to have it run with an MP3 of a song in the back ground and be able to select the number of seconds that each slide will place. (Total time about 2min 30 seconds).

Each slide is going to be a simple screenshot - I’m anticipating about 50 slides in total.

I’ve never done anything like this before....well that in not true. I found something online today that kinds of did it, and I was about done after 6 hours of work and somehow I lost it. It’s gone.

Would PowerPoint work for something like this?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ronin1069,

A word of caution: avoid using music that you down have a license to use.

YouTube (and other sites) can detect the music in your videos. Some artists don't care. Sometimes the artist gets a small royalty from the ad revenue generated by the video. Sometimes the artist/record label has your video pulled suddenly.

If you want to set your slideshow to music, and have it available for others to see, you'll want to buy a license to some royalty free music (I use AudioJungle). Licenses are like $10-25 dollars for generic sounding music.

If you find someone with a Mac, they can make a video using Apple's iPhoto software, set it to music, transitions, etc. They can pretty much do it with one click on auto mode.

Powerpoint can do everything you need. Just a couple words of encouragement. One, keep the amount of info per slide to a minimum. Two, keep the slide format simple. Everyone always seems to want to make their presentation a cinematic wonder which pulls the viewer's attention away from the info you're trying to communicate and to being entertained by the show. I want to participant to glance at the the slides occasionally but focus on me for the info I want them to take away from the presentation. And three, if you opt to use a music underlay, use only instrumental music (i.e. no vocals). Again, it will help the participants fight boredom without pulling them to deeply into the music itself.

I do maybe 20 or 30 big presentations a year (and many smaller ones), and IMO the most important aspect of doing any presentation is finding a happy medium for the the amount of info to reflect on the slides, the length of the overall presentation, and just how much decoration I want to add to it. And each of those variables differs based on my audience.