I enjoyed editing Michael Dean's two-part article on making a video out of still photos and getting it on TV. He was generous with the technical details, but managed to include a number of interesting anecdotes at the same time. What I especially liked was how he emphasized the audio side of the production process. Music is especially good at shaping stories.

If you're producing digital slideshows or videos, what have you discovered about making effective soundtracks? And if you're thinking of getting started, what's holding you back?

The music is definitely just as important as the picture. When I put together a video project, I usually start with the music I want, then make the video fit the music.

If you're talking about slideshows with audio, I tend to do the same thing. Instead of having the picture change every 5 seconds or whatever, I load the audio track in a video editor like Adobe Premier or Sony Vegas, and then I can make the pictures match the pace of the music exactly. It's much more effective and can create quite an impact with the right kind of material.

Agreed. I've also found you can approximate that great sync effect by setting the slide duration to the length of two bars of your music (assuming its tempo stays constant) and then using a crossfade transition to mask the exact moment of change.