Has anyone done the iPod set-up?

[sajilunni]

We're doing our VR at SBP. I decided not to have the included violinist, because we would rather pick out songs with lyrics that are relevant to us. (I was going to print out all the lyrics on Mickey fans) So that means that I will need to have an iPod set up to play the songs at the right times with my BIL pressing play. Has anyone else done this? Our wedding coordinator said that the songs need to be cut down as the walking-down-the-aisle only takes about 30 seconds. I am totally not tech savvy. How do you make the iPod start the song somewhere in the middle?

Has anyone else done this? I'm starting to wonder if it's going to be too much of a hassle (and $320 to boot!). Should I reconsider the violinist?

Thanks,
Jil

 

[lurkyloo]

We had an iPod at the reception and used a CD of the songs for our processional at the ceremony. We paid to have a tech run the ceremony music partly for the same reason - some of the songs needed to be faded because they were longer than our walk.

However, some of our songs I did not want faded. What we did for those was, we started them playing and held back whoever was supposed to be walking til a certain point. For example, my Dad and I waited about a minute into our song before we started walking, and we ended up parting at the altar exactly as the song finished.

But if your songs are more than a couple minutes long, this could make for a very long processional. Unfortunately, it is not possible to program the iPod to start at a certain place - your BIL would have to fade the songs out or fast-forward to the middle and start them. (There is a really complicated work-around that involves cuing the songs up to where you want them to start on your computer - I can tell you how to do that, but it's equally as awkward-sounding in practice).

The third option is to edit the songs down in music-editing software like ProTools. I have worked as a recording engineer and even I gave up on this option after a while - it was just too much work!

So, here is what you could do:

When you connect your iPod to the set-up Disney provides, the sound will be going out the line-out jack, not the headphones. That means that simply turning down the volume on the iPod to fade out the songs will not change the volume of the music. So if you had your BIL do this, he would need to turn down the volume on the amp Disney provides, then fast forward to the next song and turn the volume back up simultaneously.

You might wanna just have your BIL hit fast-forward to the next song as soon as each person gets to the altar. It won't be as graceful as fading out, but it will be easier.