Frequently Asked Questions

Fading audio is directly linked to image fading. So if you'd like to fade out the audio, just fade the last image over the audio track. This will also fade audio and the duration can be set with the images fading duration. The same applies to fading in.

While exporting a Keynote slideshow, make sure that you have selected "fixed timing" at keynotes export settings. Remove the additional tracks (Sprite track, Chapter track) from the Quicktime movie using your Quicktime Player. Open the movie in Quicktime and click on "Window" > "Show Movie Properties". There select the sprite and the chapter track and click on delete. Finally click on "File" > "Save as..." to save the playable Keynote presetnation movie. Afterwards just drag the new created movie to your FotoMagico 3 Storyboard.

The difference between "Slideshow Package" (.ssp) and "FotoMagico Slideshow" (.fms) is first of all, that Slideshow which contain more than one audio track and movies only can be saved as .fms. The second difference is that .ssp only saves your used images to the package nor thumbnails or titles. So FotoMagico has to create titles and presenter thumbnails while playback which probably lowers the performance.

FotoMagico cannot include audio from songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store if they are DRM protected in an export movie. But if you bought song that is not protected by DRM, like iTunes Plus songs, you can use those songs also for playback in an exported movie.

If you haven't saved your songs with the appropriate extension or if you have chosen to hide the extension, FotoMagico can't sometimes identify these as audio files. Also, if your audio file name contains a period after the title number, this may lead to the same behaviour. Rename your audio files and/or attach the appropriate extension, i.e. ".mp3" or ".m4a".

You can search for Audio and Movie Files in the iMediaBrowser (Audio/Movie sidebar). The suggested workflow is to prepare your media in iPhoto and iTunes by creating albums / playlists in those applications and then choosing those from FotoMagico's source popup menus.

Adding folders to the iMediabrowser (image/movie sidebar) is very simple. Right or control click the area below the picture folder in the iMediabrowser and select "Add Folder". A "select folder" window will be opened. There choose the folder you would like to add.
A much simpler way to do this, is just dragging the folder you would like to add into the free area below the picture folder in the iMediabrowser.

to remove folders from the iMediabrowser (image/movie sidebar) right or control click the area below the picture folder in the iMediabrowser and select "Remove Folder". Please keep in mind that it isn't possible to remove libraries like Aperture, Ligthroom or iPhoto; it is also impossible to remove the Mac OS X prechosen Picture folder.

If your storyboard thumbnails display wrong slides or simply displays blank slides click on "Slideshow" > "Rebuild Storyboard Thumbnails" in the menu bar. This will clear the thubnail cache and afterwards rebuild all thumbnails. This may take its time depending on the number of slides in your slideshow.

of course there is a way! To disable automatic animation on new inserted images to your slideshow you will need to open FotoMagico Preferences. They can be found by clicking on "FotoMagico" > "Preferences" in the menu bar. Now click on "Authoring" in the "Preferences" window and disable the check box next to "Apply automatic animation".

a FotoMagico 3.x created slideshow can only be opened in FotoMagico 2 if you are able to save the slideshow as 'Slideshow Package' (.ssp) file. This will only be possible if you create a slideshow in FotoMagico 3 without using FotoMagico 3 only features like multiple audio tracks or movie slides.

FotoMagico 3 don't copys the media into the document, it creates a "hard link" to the file. This means, that there are two pointers locating the same file: one from your media folder, and a second within the FotoMagico document. Since the file system ignores this fact when calculating the file size of a FotoMagico document it looks like the FotoMagico document is very big and has douplicated the media files. But physically the media file is only once on your hard drive. Note: This is only true for media files that are physically on the same hard drive. If the media files are on a different volume than the FotoMagico document then those media files always get copyied into the FotoMagico document.
This impies that if you edit the original media file this will also has an effect on the media in the FotoMagico document.

it is possible to open more than one instance of FotoMagico at a time. This allows you to open all slideshows at a time. Open the slideshows you would like to assembly. Select all slides, audio, titles from the frist slideshow and right or ctrl click the storyboard to select "copy". Now click on "File" >"New" in the menu bar and create a new slideshow. Right or ctrl click its storyboard and select "paste".
Afterwards switch to the next slideshow, select all slides, and copy it to the clipboard. Switch back to your "new" slideshow and paste it into the storyboard. Redo this for all slideshows you would like to assembly.

if exporting to an external hard drive fails check for a few things which may cause this error: 1) check for enough free space on your external hard drive. 2) Most external hard drives are formatted in FAT32. FAT32 only can handle files up to 4 GByte. So if you are exporting a slideshow which may become larger than 4GByte, FotoMagico will stop exporting. To fix this problem, please format you external hard drive to HFS+. You can change the volume format using "Disk Utility.app" which can be found in the folder "/Applications/Utilities/". After chaning, you should be able to export your slideshow successfully.
Please keep in mind that you might loose all data on the external drive while changing to a different volume format.

There is a way to increase the quality of your export. FotoMagico 3 Pro provides a customizable "Quicktime Movie" export where you are able to set up its resolution, its pixel aspect ratio and the video compression type.
First of all change the video codec to Apple Intermediate Codec.
Afterwards set up "Size" and "Pixel Aspect Ratio" regarding to aspect ratio and regional resolution distinctions (NTSC or PAL)
for standard (4:3) NTSC use: Size:

A live presentation has to make sure of prerequisites which aren't necessary when exporting to DVD. In brief and without getting too technical, in a live scenario we'll have to make sure the image has been loaded entirely and is ready for display on screen or beamer. So we may have to "wait" until that is done. Consequently, there may be tiny delays, which you didn't even recognize. Those tiny delays are displayed in FotoMagico 3 with a "Attention sign" which exactly tells you what to do. However, they come into play when exporting to DVD. As we don't have to "wait" for the image to be entirely loaded, because it will be "canned" into a movie stream, the tiny delays you intuitively created by matching audio to image according to visual judgement, now add up and ultimatively become apparent. As a result, certain visual and audio events no longer match. In order to make up for this, you'd be best off by creating two separate slideshow: One for live presentation, another one for burning.
By fixing problems in your slideshow which are displayed with an "Attention sign" next to the slide, you probably get rid of the delay issue.

FotoMagico 3 Pro users are able to use a customizable export preset which is called "Quicktime Movie". Selecting this preset will allow you to select a different video and audio codec. If you are going to after edit your slideshow you will need as much quality as possible therefor we recommend using the Apple Intermediate Codec as video codec which provides only less compression.

The problem is caused by the fact that files burned on a CD don't have the same playback speed like on a hard drive. To solve you problem, do the following: Before burning to CD, compress the standalone player applications. Therefor right or control click the file and choose "compress file..." The created *.zip file burn right on CD. To playback your slideshow on another mac, do the following: insert the CD and copy the *.zip file to the hard drive of the mac. Decompress the file by double clicking and lauch the player. Finally everything should work find.

The duration of the export step depends on many different things:
First of all it depends on the power of your Mac.
Also very important is the quality you are exporting to. So it may take much longer exporting in HD 720p or HD 1080p than exporting to iPhone/iPod recommended resolution.
Also the duration of your slideshow is very important, FotoMagico export creates a Quicktime movie which usually needs 24 to 30 frames per second. Every frames must be renedered while exporting which of course increases on slideshows with longer durations.
If you enabled "Motion Blur" your export will take much longer, because every single frame will be render three times to get the best result while moving.
So it is of course possible that a 30 minutes slideshow needs 4h for rendering.

FotoMagico only can handle movies which natively work with Quicktime.

of course it is possible to encrypt FotoMagicos Standalone Player image files. Therefor you have to enable FotoMagicos image file encryption which can be found in FotoMagicos Debug Preferences: 1. Open your FotoMagico slideshow 2. Click on "FotoMagico" next to the Apple in the menu bar. 3. hold "alt or option" - key and choose "Debug Preferences" 4. Click on "General" in the "Debug Preferences" window 5. Enable "Encrypt player image files"
After this is enabled, all images in the Standalone Player package will be encrypted and can't be accessed or used for other purposes as you intended.

The watermark that can be seen in FotoMagico's Demo mode will be removed as soon as you buy and install a license.

If your computer has more than one graphics card, removing the graphics card with lesser specifications might give you faster export and better performance.
(If you have more than one display attached, FotoMagico might report this as multiple graphics cards. In this case, removing the extra display might get you slightly better results.) Description
In technical terms, it is very difficult for the application to choose which graphics card to use when exporting. A system built into the Mac OS determines that for you. This system not always picks the better card. Removing the card that has less power ensures that the work is done on the more powerful graphics card.

Be sure, you are running Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard. FotoMagico 3.x doesn't work with earlier version of Mac OS X. If your run Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger you have to revert to FotoMagico 2.6.2.
Delete the FotoMagico Preference file. You'll find it here: /Users/Your-home-folder/Library/Preferences. Delete the file named com.boinx.fotomagico.plist
Delete also all cache files. Cache files are located here: /Users/Your-home-folder/Library/Application Support/Boinx/FotoMagico. Delete the whole folder.

To access you Aperture library you have to set up a few things in Aperture. Therefor launch Aperture and go to its Preferences (Aperture > Preferences in the menubar). Now click on "Previews" and enable "Share previews with iLife and iWork".
Afterwards you can quit Aperture and lauch FotoMagico, if you have enabled "Load Aperture library in FotoMagicos preferences, you can access your Aperture library directly within the iMediaBrowser.

Unfortunately is the integraton of Adobes Lightroom not very gentle by now. Lightroom refuses requests on adjustments. So it is only possible to use Master images from your Lightroom Library directly in FotoMagico.
As work around we would recommend exporting your adjusted images to disk and reimport them to your Lightroom library for later use in FotoMagico. You also can use the exported images directly by dragging them into FotoMagico Storyboard.

FotoMagico doesn't load your Aperture and Lightroom Library on default. Click on "FotoMagico" > "Preferences..." in the menu bar and select the tab "Libraries" ("Images" in FotoMagico 2). There you will be able to enable loading of your Libraries. After enabling the checkboxes you have to quit and relaunch FotoMagico to take changes effect.