SONY DCS-N1 DIGITAL CAMERA REVIEW

CHANGING MUSIC FOR YOUR SLIDESHOW

The Sony Cybershot N1 has the capability to use your own music for a slideshow. There are four songs factory loaded in to the camera to use for slideshows. Only one three minute song can be used at a time. You can replace any or all of the four s ongs with Mp3 songs of your own. Downloading music to the Sony N1 is a little ackward. If you connect the usb cable up to the camera and then turn the camera on, you are automatically put into the USB Connect menu for file transfer and you cannot navigate to the music transfer menu on the camera. This is the error message you receive:

This error message is a little misleading - the camera is connected up in Mass Storage mode and you can successfully download files from the camera. The proper procedure (which isn't explained anywhere) is you first must disconnect the cable, go to the setup menu on the DSC-N1 and navigate down to the 5th tab, select ‘Download Music’, and then connect the USB cable from the powered on camera to the computer. The Camera LCD screen now shows USB Mode Mass Storage – Music. Again - if you connect the cable first it won't work, as it defaults to mass storage connect.

Start Picture Package on your computer and select Music Transfer.

Clicking on 'Transfer Slideshow music' brings up this menu:

Here you are shown the 4 music tracks where you can delete and add new music tracks. The options here are play any of the 4 existing music tracks, mute the sound, and volume control. Other buttons are ‘Change Track’ and ‘Delete’. Changing the track is the same as deleting a music track and adding a new track in its place. Restore Defaults – restores the original four preset music tracks.

To change a music track, highlight one of the four music track icons and click on Change Track. A new menu pops up with two options to select music, one is a file browser to search for mp3’s. The other option is to locate an audio CD on your system and select one of the tracks on the music cd. There is a play button on both these options allowing you to preview the music before you transfer it to the DCS-N1. Selecting the track begins the process of converting the music and transferring the music to the camera. Note that any song selected over 3 minutes will be truncated at 3 minutes (actually a nice fade-out is created at this point). If the slide show lasts more than 3 minutes, the song is repeated.

Menu to locate Mp3s on your harddrive.

Menu to Rip a song from an audio CD.

Importing the music selected.