Hi guys, just purchased the software. I have a bunch of wedding client images. I shot with 2 different cameras. When I drag the image folder into Fotomagico, it sorts images by file name. No good for my application as I interchanged cameras during the wedding day. I need the images in chronological order, not file name order.
How do I sort by date/time in the storyboard, or how to I sort the images by date/time before I drag and drop the images into the storyboard?
Please advise, thanks in advance
FM doesn’t have the ability to sort files by date or time. When you bring in a folder of images, they come in in name order. And if you just drag them to the storyboard, that’s how they’ll show up. You COULD manually re-arrange the photos within the timeline, but that’s probably not what you want to do.
If you REALLY want to do it the “easy” way, find either a free or paid file renamer utility (I’m not associated with it, and it costs a bit more than most, but I have used “A Better Finder Rename” for years). It is EXTREMELY POWERFUL in renaming files. In particular, you can rename a file by using it’s creation date (or modified date) and appending it (in various formats and combinations) to the file name (at the beginning, the end, or anywhere in between). If you append, for example, the creation dates in YYMMDD order to the beginning of the file names, they will appear in that order when dragged into FM’s timeline.
Ah that makes sense, thanks for that tip,…but my lord, why on earth didn´t the software builder not think of this very basic feature is beyond me.
My slideshows have 80-120 images so the manual approach wouldn´t work. I use lightroom and could rename them as I export them. Thanks for that simple but great tip!!
On a side note (as I seem to be speaking with an expert here): I purchased my version from the Apple app store for EUR 49. Would I have to upgrade for another EUR 49 to get a feature to edit the audio file (cut the length of the file)?
Hi Andy,
Thank you for using FotoMagico and taking the time to comment. We will add the “sorting by date” to the feature request list.
The Pro upgrade in the App Store will get you a bunch of nice additions regarding audio such as audio envelopes which lets you change the volume over time and the powerful Audio Marker Assistant. However, FotoMagico does not come with an Audio editor that lets you edit the audio file. If you want to use a music file and the slideshow should end before the music ends, you determine this by setting the duration of the slides. If there are no more slides, the music will stop to play at the end of the slideshow.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Oliver.
Thanks Oliver much appreciated!
I did the upgrade hoping I can figure it all out! Just trying to:
- bring slide duration back from 5s to 3s (I have a slideshow of 200 images), how do I change the duration for all slides in one action?
- match the audio to slides when using 2 audio tracks. When I drag and drop the two audio files in and then drag the last track up to the last slide and select match slides to audio, the software only adjust the slide duration of the slides that are above the second(last) audio track). The first audio track still has the original 5s per slide.
Thank you!
Hi, Andy - I’ll give this a try 
To change the slide duration for a large number of “contiguous” slides is easy. In either the Storyboard or Timeline mode, click to select the first slide, then hold the shift key down while you click to select the last slide (all slides in between will be selected). Now, in the Options panel, under the Slide sub-menu, where it says Duration, just click on the current value showing (for example 5.0s) and change it to 3.0s. That will adjust ALL the selected slides to the duration you want.
I’m not exactly following your second question. First you say “match the audio to slides” and then you say “match slides to audio” – which are completely opposite. In any case, to match one to the other for whatever option you want, select the slides in question using the same technique above (i.e., shift-click to select a range), then shift-click to select the audio track you want associated with those slides above it. Then either right-click for a contextual menu or go to Slideshow > Match and choose Slide Durations to Audio – OR – Audio Length to Slides. The first will adjust all slide durations to fit the audio track. The second will cut the audio track at the last slide. (You may have to fiddle around with the options and durations to get exactly what you want. I’ve had some problems getting the Slide Duration to Audio to work occasionally, and what I’ll do is force all slides to some ridiculously low value, like .2 seconds, and THEN perform the Slide Duration to Audio function. It seems to like that – when it has to “lengthen” the duration. Sometimes when I need to shorten the duration, it doesn’t want to work correctly).
thanks for that, very much appreciated.
When you say ´then shift-click to select the audio track you want associated with those slides above it´ I have 2 audio tracks. How to I get those two audio tracks to play in full and the slideshow duration to match the two tracks? Because when I select match slide duration to audio, it only alters the slide durations of those slides above the second track.
How would I get fotomagico to leave the audio of the two tracks as it is (without looping it either) and change only the duration of all the slides?
Thanks again for your help. Its not easy trying to explain this to somebody like myself.