A method for producing an audio-visual slideshow for a video sequence having an audio soundtrack and a corresponding video track including a time sequence of image frames, comprising: segmenting the audio soundtrack into a plurality of audio segments; subdividing the audio segments into a sequence of audio frames; determining a corresponding audio classification for each audio frame; automatically selecting a subset of the audio segments responsive to the audio classification for the corresponding audio frames; for each of the selected audio segments automatically analyzing the corresponding image frames to select one or more key image frames; merging the selected audio segments to form an audio summary; forming an audio-visual slideshow by combining the selected key frames with the audio summary, wherein the selected key frames are displayed synchronously with their corresponding audio segment; and storing the audio-visual slideshow in a processor-accessible storage memory.