How to Make a Memorial Slideshow: A Practical Guide

If you've been asked to put together a photo tribute and the service is in a few days, start with one phone call before you start choosing photos. Ask the funeral director three things: how many images their system takes, what file format and deadline they need, and how they'd like to handle the music. Those three answers will save you from the two mistakes families most often make — building something the venue can't play, and building it around a song that causes trouble later.

Everything below assumes you're doing this while grieving and short on time, so it's ordered by what will cost you the most if you get it wrong.

1. The photo count is set by your venue, not by the internet

Search results will tell you 60 to 80 photos at four or five seconds each. For a general photo slideshow that's a reasonable working range, and it's roughly what our own slideshow guide suggests. But it's a convention rather than a standard, the guides publishing it don't agree with each other — some say three to four seconds per image, others five to seven — and a memorial has a constraint a birthday montage doesn't: someone else's equipment has to play it. At those two rates, the same five-minute slideshow holds either 100 photos or about 43.

More importantly, the venues themselves often say something different:

• Wesley Media, which supplies visual tributes to UK crematoria, recommends "a minimum of 6 seconds per image" and notes that "a tribute lasting 3 minutes would ideally have no more than 30 images."
• Obitus, another crematorium AV supplier, caps its standard slideshow tiers at "up to 25 images," with anything beyond that priced separately.
• Sylvan Funerals in Australia suggests photos stay on screen "between 4-6 seconds" and keeping the whole thing "within 6 minutes... usually this allows for no more than 60 photos."
• Some US funeral homes go the other way entirely — one invites families to upload "up to 500 photos" and builds the tribute itself.

So a family that follows the top search result and carefully curates 80 photos can find their crematorium's package accepts 25. Better to know that on day one than two days out. Ask first.

2. Deadlines are earlier than you think

The file is usually due before the day of the service, sometimes with no flexibility. Chesterfield and District Crematorium, a council-run venue, states that "the deadline for Obitus to receive the photos and create the slideshow is 48 hours prior to the service," with music requirements due "two working days prior" — which across a weekend can mean four calendar days. Wesley Media is blunter still: "Any material or requested amendments received after the cut-off time will not be accepted."

If you have four or five days — and many families, depending on faith and country, have far less — that leaves roughly two working days of actual assembly, starting before relatives have finished sending photos. Set the collection deadline for family a full day before you think you need it.

Ask to test the file at the venue the day before if that's possible. Bring it on a USB drive, and bring a second copy.

3. Number your filenames

This one is invisible until it ruins the running order. Sylvan Funerals and Wesley Media both warn about it. Sylvan Funerals' guideline sheet states: "If photographs are not numbered, they will be placed in a randomised order." Wesley Media asks families to "Number each file in the order you wish them to appear," using names like VT1 001.jpeg, and notes that duplicate filenames can't be uploaded at all.

If you're sending loose photos for someone else to assemble, rename them 001_, 002_, and so on before you upload. If you're assembling it yourself, it doesn't matter — but most families end up doing some of both.

4. Format, resolution, and the aspect-ratio trap

Sylvan Funerals, Obitus, and Wesley Media converge on the same spec: MP4, 1080p, 16:9 widescreen, on a USB drive, with a backup.

Two things worth knowing that general slideshow guides don't cover:

A PowerPoint file may not play at all. Sylvan Funerals' guidance states that "Microsoft Powerpoint is not supported by most chapels" and asks families to export to video first. Treat PowerPoint as an authoring tool, never as the deliverable — the .pptx itself is not a file the venue can run.

Old photos don't fit a widescreen frame. This is the mechanical problem nobody warns families about. A square Polaroid or a vertical 1950s portrait dropped into a 16:9 timeline gets thick black bars down both sides and occupies maybe a third of the screen. Your best photos are often your oldest ones, and they're the ones that will look smallest.

There's no perfect fix, but there are decent ones: use a slow push-in or pan across the image so it fills more of the frame and doesn't sit dead on screen, or set a soft blurred version of the same photo as the backdrop behind it. Both are standard features in consumer slideshow tools. And check the orientation first — Obitus notes that venue screens may be landscape or portrait, and asks families to match photo dimensions to whichever it is.

One more: don't pre-crop your photos to fit. If someone else is assembling the tribute, send the full frame and let them crop. Cropping is reversible for them; it isn't for you.

5. The music problem, and the fix

This is the section most guides get wrong, and it's the one with real consequences.

There are two different permissions involved, and families conflate them. The US National Funeral Directors Association explains both on its own music licensing page — and to be clear before any of it: none of this is legal advice, it describes US trade-body guidance, and your funeral director is the person who actually holds a licence and knows the rules where you are.

Playing the song at the service is generally fine, because it's the funeral home's licence, not yours. The NFDA's licence "covers the performance of music (live or recorded) that is played at any funeral service... as long as it is performed in connection with a funeral, memorial service, or ceremony," including offsite venues. Worth knowing: they also state that a personal Spotify or Amazon Music subscription doesn't cover this, since those are "licensed for personal use only, not for public performance at a business."

Recording the song into the video is a different thing entirely. The NFDA is explicit: "Does my music license cover recording music to tribute videos or DVDs? No. Recording music to a video requires a synchronization license, which is separate from a performance license." They add that the collecting societies don't issue these, so obtaining one "is generally not practical."

Their own recommended workaround is the useful part, and it's the thing to ask your funeral director about:

"The other alternative is to play the popular songs requested by the family on the funeral home's music system from a recording while the DVD or video is playing. As long as the songs are not recorded on to the DVD or video, a synchronization license is not required."

In other words: deliver the slideshow with royalty-free music or no music at all, and let the funeral home play the meaningful song over the room's system while it runs. You get the song, in the room, with none of the downstream problems.

Note that this cuts against what some venues ask for — Sylvan Funerals in Australia asks families to "provide your photo slideshow with your chosen music embedded." It's genuinely venue-dependent, which is why the phone call matters.

What happens when you upload it afterwards

Families almost always share the video later, and this is where an embedded song bites.

The NFDA notes that Facebook and YouTube "have separate settlement agreements with music companies that cause their systems to automatically mute copyrighted music in streams — even if you hold a valid webcasting license."

YouTube's own copyright claims documentation explains what a Content ID match actually does. A claim can block the video, monetize it by running ads, or track its viewership — and the outcomes can differ by country. Critically: "'Monetize' is the most common policy applied to music claims."

So the likely outcome isn't takedown. It's that the memorial video stays up, plays normally, and a pre-roll ad appears in front of it, with the revenue going to a record label. Many families find that worse than being muted.

Two things that soften it: a Content ID claim is not a copyright strike, and YouTube says claims "usually don't impact your channel or account." And you can fix it yourself in YouTube Studio — the platform offers an "Erase song" option to mute just the claimed audio, and a "Replace song" option using its own audio library.

One exception worth knowing, because relatives often clip a minute of the tribute for social: YouTube states that Shorts between one and three minutes long "will be blocked if there is an active claim applied, regardless of policy." Short vertical clips get treated more harshly than the full video.

The simplest path remains: keep the song out of the file, and the file stays clean everywhere you put it.

6. Ordering: chronological, with intent

Chronological is the standard, and the one refinement worth the effort is counting images per decade before you build. A tribute that spends three minutes on childhood and thirty seconds on the last twenty years feels lopsided to the colleagues and friends who only knew the later person — and they're often a large share of the room.

A thematic structure — family, work, faith, travel — works better for someone whose life had distinct communities, or when photos are arriving from people who each knew a different side of them.

7. Photos from the person's final months

Families argue about this, usually late at night and usually while exhausted, so it's worth deciding early rather than discovering the disagreement during a rehearsal.

There's no rule here and anyone who states one confidently is guessing. What's worth knowing is that the person assembling the slideshow is often not the person with the strongest feelings about those particular images. Ask before you build, not after. A spouse, a parent, or an adult child who wasn't consulted about a hospital photo appearing on a chapel screen has a legitimate grievance, and it's easily avoided.

A reasonable default: the tribute is for shared remembrance rather than documentation. One quiet, candid image from the last year usually belongs. A clinical setting usually doesn't. But it's the family's call, and it should be made together.

Preparing the photos themselves

Two practical notes on image quality, since a 50-inch screen is unforgiving.

Ask relatives for original files, not screenshots. A photo forwarded through a messaging app and screenshotted arrives at a fraction of its original resolution and looks soft when projected. Ask for the original, five to ten favorites each.

Damaged photos are worth including anyway. A meaningful photo in imperfect condition matters more in that room than a sharp one nobody recognizes. If the box turns out to be instant photos, they have their own handling rules — restoring old Polaroids covers those. Otherwise, scanning and repairing the important ones first makes a visible difference on a large screen — how to scan old photos covers doing it properly, and photo restoration handles fading, scratches, and low resolution. If you're weighing options there, the best photo restoration tools compares them honestly. Realistically, though, if the service is in three days, restore five photos rather than fifty.

What 43frames does and doesn't do here

To be straightforward about it: 43frames is not a slideshow editor. There's no timeline, no transitions, no place to lay photos out against a song.

What it does is the preparation step — restoring, de-fading, and upscaling old prints so they hold up when projected, and turning a single still into a short piece of gentle motion you can drop into the tribute. The assembly itself belongs in a slideshow tool: Canva, CapCut, iMovie, Photos on a Mac, or whatever your funeral home's own system provides. Our general guide to making a photo slideshow video walks through that side, and how to restore old photos covers the repair workflow in detail.

The checklist

1. Call the funeral director. Photo count, file format, screen orientation, deadline, music handling.
2. Set a collection deadline for family a day earlier than you need.
3. Ask for originals, five to ten each, not screenshots.
4. Number the filenames if anyone else is assembling it.
5. Restore the handful that matter most, if there's time.
6. Build it at 1080p in the orientation the venue uses, using a slow push-in in your slideshow tool so square and vertical photos fill more of the frame.
7. Keep the copyrighted song out of the file — arrange to have it played in the room instead.
8. Export as MP4, put it on two USB drives, and test it at the venue the day before.

FAQ

How many photos should it have? Ask the venue. Published guidance ranges from a 25-image package cap to a funeral home inviting 500 uploads. The number is set by whoever plays it.

What file format do funeral homes want? Usually MP4, 1080p, 16:9, on a USB drive with a backup. Ask whether the chapel screen is landscape or portrait.

Can I use a copyrighted song? Playing it at the service is the funeral home's licence. Recording it into the file is a separate permission. Ask your funeral director — this isn't legal advice.

Why did YouTube put ads on the video? A Content ID match on the music. YouTube says monetizing is the most common policy for music claims. You can mute or replace the audio in YouTube Studio.

How far in advance is it due? Often 48 hours before the service, sometimes with a hard cut-off after which nothing is accepted.