One of the new features in Aperture 3 is the ability to create exportable slideshows. Images included can be still or moving and multiple soundtracks are supported. When you are ready to output you can choose the aspect ratio and export to different formats via presets (low res. to 1080p HD) or create your own.
It’s helpful to take a look in Aperture’s help file first to learn the lay of the land. Once done, it’s very easy. I tested this out creating a video for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, exporting it in 720p HD, and then running the video from my laptop direct into the hall’s HD projection system. It worked perfectly.
As with all things Aperture you can work from raws, tiffs, jpegs, or Photoshop format image files. Video included is similar but the controls are limited. You can trim a clip from within Aperture and that’s about it.
The video I created spans the past thirteen years. So, it covers the transition from film to digital. Still images in it run the gamut from scanned prints and scanned negatives (Nikon & Leica 35mm, Mamiya RZ) to Point & Shoot Digital (Olympus 2500L, Canon S2-Canon G10, iPhone) to DSLR (Nikon D1 & D1x, Canon 1Ds Mark I, II, & III). About half of the images are direct from raw files. There are three video clips included, the first from a Canon S2 and the last two from the iPhone 3Gs.
I used Aperture to do my edit, first gathering images already in the database into an album. I added the new scans and video clips. Then I started editing and ranking the images via the color tags (the 1-5 star based rankings were already in use and I didn’t want to disturb those settings.) I was able to quickly pare down the take from 369 images to 122 plus the three video clips.
Some of the preset export formats are *.m4v, Apple’s iTunes video format. If that’s the case and you want to use a more universal format you can open the file in Quicktime and re-save it. This will save it as *.mov.
All of the export options are video files. They can be sent automatically to iTunes and/or Apple TV, they can be shared online, or run via a computer to another device. They can also be burned to playable DVD but not within Aperture. To do that you need to open iDVD and add the movie file to a project within it.
—
March 11, 2011 – moved video to Vimeo.