[kazinator]

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.

[iamthemalto]

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

[segh]

I don't know how literal you are being, but it is not "literally anyone". If you know what FFmpeg is, you are a very small minority of the population.

[zrobotics]

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.

[kazinator]

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.

[richrichardsson]

> just one or two personal vids and then I'm probably done with this for good.

I think you're underestimating the skill involved in making the flip book.

While you may just have one or two videos to make into flip books, I strongly suspect it will take you at least 4 or 5 attempts on the 1st one to get something that isn't a pile of crap that doesn't perform as a flip book very well, and/or falls apart almost immediately.

In the long run unless you really want to go through the process of refining the process for the enjoyment of that, it would be cheaper in both time and material costs to buy from the OP.

[kazinator]

I made a book before, out of the PDF scans of an instruction manual for some old piece of gear. It was a piece of cake. I went for a pocket format, so I printed four pages per sheet, on each size. For the spine, I used a generous bead of PVA glue, and gave the thing a cover made of boxboard.

There are other binding methods that would work okay for a flipbook, like putting rings or coils through perforations and whatnot.

[navane]

can you do this with 1hr of your time, from "i want this vid as a flip" to having it in your hand?