A cremation service slideshow that fits the time you have

Open Running order in the menu. At the top are three fields: Date, Start and 'How long may the service take?'. The last one is a list from 10 to 120 minutes in steps of five. Pick a value and four boxes appear side by side: Length of the service, Speaking time, Presentation and Time left. The fourth box is green while everything fits. Once the total runs past the service length it turns red and its label changes to 'Too long'. The same figure sits above your slideshow as a single line, for example '32:10 of 30 minutes · 2:10 too long'. Click that line and you are back in the running order.

Enter a time under Start, say 2:00 pm, and every part of the service gets a clock time. You can then read the service line by line: entrance music at 14:00, words of welcome at 14:05, the first photo slideshow at 14:08 with the song title underneath, a eulogy at 14:12. The duration of each part is on the right, and the heading of the block called 'The service' shows when the whole thing starts and ends, such as 14:00 – 14:32. Leave Start empty and you get a dash, with a short hint that the time can still be filled in. Move a part or shorten a song and every time after it shifts along automatically.

When it does not fit, you fix it on the same screen where you build the slideshow. A worked example: the service may take 30 minutes, the boxes show 12:00 of speaking time and 20:10 of presentation, so you are 2:10 too long. In your collection you use Trim to cut a 4:40 song down to 3:10 (a trimmed version is added, the original stays) and select that version for the part with Choose music. You ask the assistant to set one eulogy to four minutes instead of five, or change it yourself in the advanced view. The box now reads 'Time left 0:20'. The shorter song leaves the forty photos only about five seconds each, and that number is shown in amber next to the part. You take ten photos out of the part (they stay in your collection) and add them to the entrance with Choose photos. Thirty photos over 3:10 is a little more than six seconds each again.

In the overview a photo slideshow or piece of music carries the label 'waits for start'. It means exactly that: the part begins only when the operator presses start, so a speaker can finish and walk back to their seat before the music comes in. A speaker part works the other way round: its photo stays up until someone clicks on. The entrance and the exit repeat until you stop them. Need a stop in the middle of a part, because someone reads a few lines halfway through? Every photo has a small button in its bottom-left corner that says Play. Click it and it turns red and says Stop: the slideshow will wait for start at that photo. Click again and it runs through as before. You can also ask the assistant in plain words.

View preview is where you check it. The preview plays with the music and stops in exactly the places it will stop during the service. At a waiting moment the picture dims and you see the name of the part, the line 'This part waits until start is pressed.' and a Start button. At a speaker part a hint tells you the photo stays on screen during the speech and that the space bar moves on. The parts are listed as buttons along the bottom, so you can jump straight to one handover without sitting through the whole service. Click through the preview once like this and you know how the funeral photo slideshow will behave at the cremation.

You add your own MP3 files and choose which song belongs to which part. The photos spread themselves over the length of that song, and the part shows how long each one gets, for example '±7 sec per photo'. A photo is on screen for eight seconds at most; with few photos and a long song, the series comes round again.

This matters for the clock. A song of 3:45 costs 3:45 of the service whether it carries twenty photos or thirty. To win back minutes you trim the song or choose a shorter one; adding or removing photos only changes the pace. Below six seconds per photo the number turns amber as a sign that it is going fast.

A slideshow for a cremation service rarely goes wrong because of the photos. It goes wrong on the clock and at the handovers: a song still playing while the next speaker is already standing, or a person at the controls who is unsure whether to click. The time overview and the waiting moments exist for exactly that. You see the problem in numbers while you are still building, and you solve it in a few clicks.

You do not have to do it alone. Invite relatives and friends by email as helpers; they get in with their email address and a code and add photos, videos and music to the shared collection. HEIC photos from an iPhone, JPEG and PNG all work as they are. Everything runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or laptop, with nothing to install. Send the Order of service (PDF) to the speakers, so everyone knows how many minutes of the memorial slideshow programme are theirs.

Building, previewing and adjusting are free, including the running order with its times. You can play the preview with music as often as you like; it carries a light watermark. You pay once, when you download, and you can download again later if something changes. No subscription and no payment details needed up front; you can pay with iDEAL | Wero, Bancontact or card.