I really like the parallaxed, knolled layout of a car's parts that you did for your ad for your 'Ultimate Video Course' (middle of https://www.howacarworks.com/basics/the-engine).
How long did that take to finish?
Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
131–140 of 197 posts
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't really share conversion stuff yet. But one interesting observation off the top of my head is that my customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe, even though I deliberately steer them towards Stripe. It was a massive pain to implement Paypal and I hated every moment of it but it produced an uptick in payments.
> customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe That's interesting. Do you have a theory about why that is?
All my friends use Stripe, but I'm stuck with PayPal b/c I don't have a debit card.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#133Very cool. It's amazing how complex the combustion engine seems, especially compared to an electric motor. No wonder cars have a limited lifetime of typically some 150-200k miles. It's going to be really interesting to our purchasing and maintenance patterns for EVs.
Ehh modern engines are pretty reliable. They can easily do over 200k miles. The actual combustion part is basically a solved problem. Modern fuel injection (amongst other things) has done wonders for engine reliability. It's usually other things that cause people to want to ditch cars around 150-200 k. E.g. the automatic transmission failing, timing belt (instead of a chain) failing around 100k, alternator and other electronics, pumps, etc.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#134IMO what is really clever about this is that it is a "sales" video - except you dont realise you are being sold to until the end, by which time you've enjoyed the video so much, the pitch at the end is reasonable. And you've shown what the value is long before I asked myself the question "how much" - which I usually ask early in the process - but not here. At least that is how I found it... great work. Would be inter…
I can't really share conversion stuff yet. But one interesting observation off the top of my head is that my customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe, even though I deliberately steer them towards Stripe. It was a massive pain to implement Paypal and I hated every moment of it but it produced an uptick in payments.
I just paid by PayPal. I'm reading this post on the couch relaxing and I have no desire to go get my wallet and dig out my credit card. Way easier.
Also, after watching a couple videos and reading the content, the production value and informational value of this is super high. By the time I learned what the price was, I was fairly surprised how cheap it was. $20 is what I spend on a sandwich and drink for lunch. So it was an automatic no-brainer. You could probably double or triple the price easily.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#135This is impressive marketing, I purchased the class, am happy about it, AND liked the way it was marketed to me.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#136Congratulations! This is a really nice project, it seems to have the right combination between real knowledge about the car and audio-visual effects to keep people engaged.
I just subscribed to the video course and I can see the preorder offer is a no brainer, skimming through the PDF provided I can see there is enough value on it to easily make it worth the $20 by itself.
So as a suggestion: Highlight the PDF and its content on the preorder page, there is only one mention about it but it doesn't specify its contents.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#137Very cool. The motorcycle equivalent is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkHJuU01-Wk&index=43&list=PL... I watched about 3/4 of these ^^ videos, really learned a lot about how a combustion engine works.
I always kinda liked this one of a motorcycle engine with one end cut off. You can see how the valves work, and how they are designed to rotate under load, to even out the valve seat wear.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#138Very cool, well-shot video. As others have said, I was more interested in a detailed explanation of the inner-workings. After finishing the video and exploring others, I found my way to the video course preorder page. $20 paid! Great concept, best of luck. Plan to start watching this weekend.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#139This is neat, but based on the title, I thought this was going to be a bit more informative about _how_ engines work, and how each subprocess contributes toward the end goal. What I saw instead was a subset of subprocesses in isolation from each other, presented in an admittedly artistic fashion. It's impressive, and maybe the purpose is more to whet one's appetite for more information rather than be informative in i…
This is what you're looking for ( https://animagraffs.com/how-a-car-engine-works/ ). It's a breakdown of pretty much every automotive internal combustion engine used today. Once you understand the basics, the stop-motion video becomes pretty cool as you can try and label every part that's coming off
Just to be clear that animagraff is showing specifically how a 4cycle gasoline-powered reciprocating engine works. Diesel engines account for roughly 50% of automotive vehicles in the world.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#140Top notch! It looks so easy! But you forgot the part where you spend an hour banging, cursing, and blasting that one bolt with a torch because it. just. will. not. budge, only to have it snap off and realize you're going to spend tomorrow drilling it out and tapping that hole...
I am convinced from my experiences doing DIY auto repair that the jobs themselves are all fairly simple, it is dealing with stuck bolts and bolts that are hard to get to which turn the job into hours of work and frustration.