The other day I came across a web app that allowed users to print GIF animations as flipbooks. The site - gifprint.com - isn’t working anymore but the idea is nonetheless interesting. The app extracts all the image frames of the animated GIF, arranges the individual frames in sequence, like a contact sheet, and then creates a PDF file ready to be sent to the printer.

Historically, video editors and producers would create proof sheets which were like a series of photos extracted from the video and printed on a strip for review. We can do something similar for YouTube videos as well with the storyboard bookmarklet. See sample.

When you are watching any video on the YouTube website, the storyboard for that video is automatically downloaded in the background. The Print YouTube bookmarklet stitches all these storyboard image frames as one large poster as shown in the video demo (↓).

To get started, drag the above bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar. Then open any video on YouTube, click the bookmarklet link and it should instantly generate a storyboard for that video which you can either print or save as PDF.

These storyboards offer a visual summary of videos and you can generate them for short videos as well as full-length movies on YouTube.