sliding/fading header plugin or approach suggestion

I find using custom post types in WordPress is the easiest way to achieve this. I have used them on quite a few websites and on a major record label website I am currently working on to create multiple carousels with relationships throughout the site.

I would recommend a post type UI tool like Easy Post Types to create custom post types and then use features like “featured thumbnail image” and custom fields to create simple carousels that can be accessed by get_posts, query_posts and creating a new instance of WP_query.