Add a voiceover to your photo slideshows
What you need: Shotcut; Audacity; Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Time taken: 40 minutes
Instant-messaging services like Whatsapp make it easy to share photos, but don’t always let you add context. In this Workshop, we’ll show you how to use two of our favourite tools (Shotcut and Audacity) to turn your photos into an impressive slideshow complete with voiceover track, allowing you to provide the backstory to each photo. The resulting video is perfect for sharing with friends and family, and creates a lasting record for yourself.
STEP 1 Download Shotcut ( www.snipca.com/37328 - click the Windows Installer link under the ‘Site 1 (Fosshub)’ heading) and Audacity ( www.snipca.com/37330 - click the Audacity Windows Installer link). Run the installers for both, then launch the programs. Now press the Windows key+e to open File Explorer and copy the photos you want to include in your slideshow into a new folder. Within this folder, rename them according to the order in which they’ll appear in your slideshow. To do this, select the first photo, press F2, rename it ‘1’ (leaving the file extension as it is 1 ), then repeat until you’ve renamed them all.
STEP 2 Open Audacity and make sure the input source is set to MME 1 (this tells Audacity to record audio captured by your microphone). When you’re ready to record the voiceover for your first photo, click the Record button 2 (or press the R key). When you’ve finished, click the Record button again (or press Space). If needed, trim the start and end of the recording by selecting the sections you want to remove using your mouse, then pressing the Delete button.
STEP 3 To save your voice recording, click File, Export then Export Audio (or press Ctrl+shift+e). Navigate to the photos folder you created in Step 1, set the filename to 1 1 , then click Save. Check that your photos folder now contains your voiceover file (this will be called ‘1.flac’), then return to Audacity and clear the first voiceover recording by pressing Ctrl+a followed by the Delete key. Now repeat the same process to record the voiceovers for the rest of your photos, naming the audio files 2, 3 and so on.
STEP 4 You now need to combine your photos with their voiceover tracks. Open Shotcut, enter a name for your slideshow in the ‘Project name’ box (in the New Project section in the centre of the window), then click Start. Click the Playlist tab 1 , then return to your photos folder in File Explorer. Press Ctrl+a to select all your files (photos and voiceovers 2 ), then drag them into the Playlist section in Shotcut 3 . Next, drag the first photo from the Playlist section on to the timeline 4 (as you do this, Shotcut will create a new video track called V1 in which to accommodate it).
STEP 5 To make your voiceovers play over each photo, you need to create a separate audio track. To do this, press Ctrl+u. An audio track, labelled A1 1 , will now appear under the video track that contains your photo. Drag the voiceover for your first photo (if you followed our file-naming convention, this will be called ‘1.flac’ 2 ) from the Playlist section to this audio track. It’s best to leave a small period of silence between photos, so drag the audio clip so it starts a couple of seconds after your photo. You can now adjust the duration that your photo is displayed to match the duration of your voiceover by clicking and dragging its right edge 3 . Again, it’s best to have your photo finish slightly after the narration.
STEP 6 Drag your second photo on to your video track and place it so it sits directly after the first photo (it will snap into place as you drag it). If you now drag the photo so that it slightly overlaps the first (as we’ve done here), Shotcut will apply a simple fade transition between the two 1 . Next, repeat the process, adding the rest of your photos, along with their voiceover tracks, to your timeline. If you need to rerecord a voiceover, select it on your audio track, press Delete, then import the new version as described above.
STEP 7 Press the Play button
1 to preview your slideshow.
Don’t worry if the transitions stutter or your audio sounds a little crackly – these will be fixed when you export the slideshow. When you’re happy with it, click File 2 , then ‘Export Video…’. Unless you have a specific format you want to use, leave the Presets section set to Default 3 (this saves your video as an MP4 file, which can be opened by most computers, phones, tablets and TVS). Click ‘Export File’ 4 , then choose where to save your video. You’ll see the progress of the export process in the Jobs section 5 .