Complex build sequences - hard to manage

Question

Hi Folks,
I like to create automated slide shows in Keynote in which music and images are timed to create the effect I'm seeking. These can be anywhere from 3 minutes to 20 minutes long, and contain hundreds of images. I use multiple builds and build formats to do these, and not all of these can be smart builds. In fact, I find that I use smart builds fairly rarely to do this. Keynote is great for this work.
The thing is, I usually use three or four pieces of music in each show, and because of how Keynote works the best way to handle this has been one song per slide, with all the images flowing by. This means that one slide can hold as many as 80 images, many full screen.
Keynote can handle this, but managing the images becomes a problem because they end up stacked on top of each other. So this is my question:
Without using smart builds, is there a way to arrange to look at all the overlapping elements of a slide without having to move the other elements out of position? The window in the inspector doesn't work for this as it doesn't separate the images from one another.
Thanks.
Bruce (Sbmoot)

Answer 1

There isn't an easy way to manage that many builds. One thing you can do is use the Build Order window to select each image in the builds -- each time you select an image in the order, you will see what the slide looks like up to that point. Also, the order list shows the name of the imported file, so if the images you import have meaningful names, this can be helpful as well.
If you are building large slide shows, you may find that iPhoto is a more flexible tool for what you want -- it can easily produce shows with multiple pieces of music, and more easily generates some animations like the Ken Burns Effect. iPhoto shows can also be exported to QuickTime, and thus incorporated into Keynote presentations, so you may find that combining them may give you the best results.