I often do weddings and funerals, and as part of the wedding or funeral people like a Keynote slideshow with 10-20 photos set to some background music. The problem is there may be other slides that need to come before or after it without background music. The easiest way to achieve this is to make a ‘movie’ of the slides (with a soundtrack) and then re-import this movie into a Keynote as a single slide. Here’s how to export a Keynote slideshow with a soundtrack.
The Problem.
If you are trying to make a keynote presentation that is timed to music, it’s hard because in Keynote you can only add music to a single slide, or to a whole presentation. If you add music to a single slide, it stops when you advance to the next slide. If you add music to an entire slideshow, it starts when the keynote starts, which may not be what you want. In my case I want the music to begin well into the Keynote presentation, and then to play for 20 or so slides, but not for the whole presentation.
The Solution.
Make a quicktime movie of the slides that you want the soundtrack to and then re-import this movie into a Keynote as a single slide. It will appear as 1 slide but that slde will be a movie of several slides with a soundtrack.
Here’s how to do it step by step.
How to Record a Presentation in Apple Keynote
1. Make a new keynote file with the pictures in it that you want the music to play for.
2. Add an audio file from iTunes to the Keynote file as a ‘soundtrack’. Do not drag the audio file onto the slide or it will only play for the slide. make sure you go to the Inspector Window, select ‘document’ Go to the ‘Audio Tab’ and add a ‘Soundtrack’.


3. Turn down the recording volume level.
Go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Sound > Input and move the ‘Input volume’ slider volume to the left so that it does not record any sound while you are recording.
This is because the ‘Record Slideshow’ Is expecting you to do a “voice-over” on top of your keynote and it will record this voiceover. But in this case we do not want a voice-over, we just want the soundtrack that we added in step two. There is no way to stop Keynote from recording a “voice-over” so the next best thing is to turn the input volume to zero so that the “voice-over” is silent.
4. From the ‘play’ menu choose ‘Record Slideshow’.

5. With Keynote 7 and later you then need to press this Red ‘record’ button on the bottom left of the presenter display.
Now you can manually advance the slides (using the right arrow key) in time with the music. Press the Red button again to stop the recording. Keynote will record the time that you advance each slide.
You may wish to play back the presentation and check the timings are correct.
6. Export the entire keynote as a Quicktime movie. (File menu: Export To: Quicktime…) Under the options choose’ Playback Uses: Recorded Timing’. Also choose ‘Include the slideshow soundtrack’ and ‘Full Quality, Large’.

This is what it looks like in Keynote 7:

7. You now have a stand alone movie of the images with a soundtrack. You can drag this movie into a new Keynote and play it at any point in the slideshow.
NOTE: There is a bug in some versions of keynote that means the audio will cut off after 30 seconds. If this is happening for you there is a simple fix:
Go to “File†then “Advanced†and “Change File Type†and set it to “Packageâ€
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