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Adding background music to your story

You can add background music that plays during your story. A different piece of music can play for each picture or for a group of pictures. You can add as many pieces of music to a story as there are pictures in the story.

You can use music from your computer and the Photo Story custom music in your story. The Select Music option lets you choose a piece of music from your computer, a network folder, or the Internet. The Create Music option lets you customize prerecorded pieces and styles of music by selecting the genre, style, bands, mood, tempo, and intensity of the music.

To select the music for your story, select a picture. Then select a piece of music to start playing when the picture is displayed in your story.

The picture you select is the anchor image, and indicates where you want the music to start playing. The anchor image is indicated by a musical note displayed beneath the picture in the film strip.

Film strip view with color-coded music strip

The music you select plays until one of the following events occurs:

You can replace a piece of music for an anchor image by selecting a different piece of music or by dragging a music file onto the anchor image in the film strip.

If the anchor image is deleted from the story, the music and any other customizations associated with the anchor image are also deleted from the story.

When you add background music to your story, a music strip appears above the film strip. The music strip displays the name of each piece of music that is added to your video story. The music strip is color-coded for each piece of music in the story.

Photo story automatically adjusts the amount of time a piece of music will play in your story when any of the following occurs:

For example, suppose that a piece of music is long enough to play while four pictures are displayed in your story. If you select another piece of music to play starting at the third picture in the original group of pictures, the first piece of music will automatically stop playing when the third picture is displayed in your story.

If you select a piece of music that is shorter than the picture duration in your story, the music will end before the picture is completely displayed. If you want background music to play for the entire picture duration, you can do one of the following:

If you select a piece of music that is shorter than the duration of a group of pictures in your story, the music will end before the group of pictures is completely displayed. If you want background music to play while all the pictures in the group are displayed, you can do the following:

Note image Notes

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