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Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

videotoflip.com

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Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#94
post #87

I love this. Hoping to retire early from my tech career someday and I have dreams of finding my own weird semi-profitable niche that I can run by just myself and my family for a few hours a day. I currently have an incredibly small ebay business doing fairly specific motorsports vinyl emblems. The profit margin per order is great but I'm lucky to get a handful of orders a month and have no idea how to scale it. There…

yes, this indeed feels like a retirement! just online, because we don't actually have a booth. we have separate machines, and most of the process is manual actually.

Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#95
At the risk of sounding one of those people posting "I can do that in a weekend" ... I honestly think that not just I but almost literally anyone can cob this conversion together for themselves with Bash, FFmpeg, ImageMagick, a printer, a pair of scissors or paper guillotine, a bit of glue and a sprinkle of AI assistance so as not to have to read a shred of documentation.

Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is single-handedly keeping you in business

I see a merger in the works

Two-way merger. They can do MP4 to flipbook to MP4, as well as flip book to MP4 to flip book.

Adding some AI and they could do flipbook upscaling! Turn a 3" 50 page flipbook, to a higher resolution 8" with 500 pages for the same video.

Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#97

At the risk of sounding one of those people posting "I can do that in a weekend" ... I honestly think that not just I but almost literally anyone can cob this conversion together for themselves with Bash, FFmpeg, ImageMagick, a printer, a pair of scissors or paper guillotine, a bit of glue and a sprinkle of AI assistance so as not to have to read a shred of documentation.

I mean, the software conversion part is the easiest part. Do you have any experience with printing at scale? Printing and binding the books is probably 90% of the effort and knowledge in this business. Plus, the machinery and space alone adds up quickly. Props to the OP, this isn't an easy or quick side business to get into especially if you are printing yourselves.

Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#98

At the risk of sounding one of those people posting "I can do that in a weekend" ... I honestly think that not just I but almost literally anyone can cob this conversion together for themselves with Bash, FFmpeg, ImageMagick, a printer, a pair of scissors or paper guillotine, a bit of glue and a sprinkle of AI assistance so as not to have to read a shred of documentation.

I mean, the software conversion part is the easiest part. Do you have any experience with printing at scale? Printing and binding the books is probably 90% of the effort and knowledge in this business. Plus, the machinery and space alone adds up quickly. Props to the OP, this isn't an easy or quick side business to get into especially if you are printing yourselves.

But the point is that I don't need scale; just one or two personal vids and then I'm probably done with this for good.

Scale is the problem of someone who wants to convince the world that they need it done as a service.

There is scale in that hordes of people can independently pull this off. Like gluing beads to paper is being done at scale, if we consider all the kindergartens in the world as an aggregate producer.

Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#99

At the risk of sounding one of those people posting "I can do that in a weekend" ... I honestly think that not just I but almost literally anyone can cob this conversion together for themselves with Bash, FFmpeg, ImageMagick, a printer, a pair of scissors or paper guillotine, a bit of glue and a sprinkle of AI assistance so as not to have to read a shred of documentation.

Obligatory link to infamous dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living

#100
post #87

I love this. Hoping to retire early from my tech career someday and I have dreams of finding my own weird semi-profitable niche that I can run by just myself and my family for a few hours a day. I currently have an incredibly small ebay business doing fairly specific motorsports vinyl emblems. The profit margin per order is great but I'm lucky to get a handful of orders a month and have no idea how to scale it. There…

Not wanting to pry, but are those motorsports decals paintable? There's definitely a niche there if you can do paintable graphics, I have at least 2 motorcycle tanks that I'd love graphics for. HMU @ my username at Google mail if that's a sub field you can serve.
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