Storyboard & Timeline

The Storyboard and Timeline view at the bottom of the document window is the main area for authoring your slideshow. The Storyboard and Timeline view have a header, one or more visual tracks, and up to 3 audio tracks.

They both allow you to create and edit your slideshow. You can use both views to perform most of the same functions, however, some tasks are easier to achieve in one view than the other. You can only display one view at a time. Use the Storyboard button or the Timeline button to toggle between the two views.

The Storyboard view is generally used for adding and rearranging slides. The Timeline view is useful for fine-tuning the duration of slides and transitions, and editing audio. For information on the differences between the Storyboard and Timeline, see Working with the Storyboard/Timeline.

• The visual track contains the slides. Each slide can hold up to 6 layers (images, movies, or titles). The layers are displayed as frames that are stacked vertically. A blank slide is displayed as an empty dashed outline.
• The music track holds audio files. Music can span multiple slides.
• The sound effects track usually holds short audio clips that provide ambience for a single slide, but may also span multiple slides.
• The narration track holds recorded narration for the slideshow. It can span multiple slides if the narration was recorded in one session, or can be broken up into several different audio files that span fewer slides.
• You can expand and collapse the visual and audio tracks. Collapsing reduces the required vertical space, which is helpful on smaller notebook displays. When visual tracks are collapsed, the layers are displayed as a stack of frames, which auto-expand when you mouseover the stack.
• Chapters can help structure your slideshow into logical parts. Each chapter would contain a group of slides and audio items. Chapters can be color-coded for easy identification as you are quickly scroll through your slideshow.

Dragging files from the Finder or from the media browsers in the Sidebar adds new elements to the slideshow. The yellow highlight on the background indicates where the new items will be inserted or added.

• Image Files - Inserts new slides with the images at the dropped position.
• Movie Files - Inserts new slides with the movies at the dropped position.
• RTF Text Files - Titles are added to existing slides at the dropped position.
• Audio Files - Audio items will be added starting at the dropped position and will span as many slides as necessary to cover the length of the audio files. If necessary, empty slides will be added at the end of the slideshow. You can shorten an audio item by dragging its right edge to span fewer slides.

Telling a great story is all about arranging good images in an appropriate sequence. To rearrange the content you can:

• Select images, movies, titles, or audio items by clicking on them. When selected, they highlight in blue.
• Make a multiple selection by clicking on the background and drag a rectangle across multiple items.
• Make a multiple selection by clicking on the first item, then press the shift key and click on the last item.
• Extend the selection by pressing the ⌘ key and clicking on another item.
• Drag selected items to a new location.

• Change the range of slides an audio item spans, by dragging the left or right edge of this audio item.
• Double-clicking an item reveals the Options Inspector so you can edit parameters for the selected items.
• Delete selected items by pressing the ⌫ backspace key or by choosing the Delete command from the Edit menu.

The header displays the following information above each slide:

• If a slide is set to continue after its duration, the header displays the slide duration. Double-click the duration to edit the duration for a single slide.
• If a slide is set to continue at a mouse click, the header displays Click.
• If a slide is set to continue at an audio marker, the header displays Marker.
• Right-click (or control-click) on the text in the header to change the continue type for a slide.
• If the chosen slide duration or transition duration yields problematic timing, a yellow warning icon is displayed. Click on this icon to show a popover that explains the situation and what to do about it.

The playhead indicates where new slides will be inserted and where playback will start:

• Move the playhead by clicking on the blue triangle and dragging it to a new position.
• Move the playhead by one slide by pressing the ← or → arrow keys.
• Move the playhead to the beginning of the previous or next chapter by pressing the ⌥ key and ← or → arrow keys.
• Press the spacebar key to preview the slideshow starting at the current playhead position.

FotoMagico supports three dedicated audio tracks: Music, Sound Effects, and Narration.

• Use the button below the Storyboard/Timeline to expand or collapse the audio tracks. This helps to save some vertical screen real estate on small notebook screens. Blue indicates the track is expanded. Grey indicates the track is collapsed.
  
  

• Select Audio > Mute Track from the Slideshow menu to mute the music track, effects track or narration track. This mutes all audio in the track. A red x appears when audio is muted. This can be useful during the authoring process when you want to concentrate on a single audio track and not be distracted by other audio. To unmute the track, select the same menu item again.

• Select Insert > Record Narration... from the Slideshow menu to record audio directly to the Narration track. A panel appears that lets you record the audio. Refer to Record Narration for more details.

A right-click (or control-click) on an item reveals a contextual menu. The commands in this contextual menu depends on which kind of item you click.