I think the easiest way to promote Haiku would be a youtube campaign. Haiku was demoed successfully at many conferences so the idea would be to give that same presentation to the youtube community. It is important to stress that Haiku Inc is a non profit and that Haiku itself is free and open source.
It’s just that YouTube image quality sucks so badly, that any screencaps presented on it may actually harm the promotion.
Aren’t there alternatives to YouTube that offer better image quality?
Youtube does support high def videos as well now (they have a “high definition” link under some of their videos)
Vimeo High Def is a good alternative (example: http://vimeo.com/1393242)
youtube is the best for publicity. It’s the next best thing to commercials on tv (and given that at this stage we’re trying to attract a more tech savvy audience-even better than tv)
It’s probably the “not-so-ideal” combination of screen cap video (reduced quality anyhow) and Flash (not suited for serious video IMHO).
YouTube is nice for talking heads and textual presentations.
Better have lots of screenshots in a gallery and let the user experience Haiku’s responsiveness in a way that’ll have the best impact, i.e. at his or her first use of the OS.
if Haiku was only about responsiveness then I see what you mean. it’s like trying to advertise a HD display on your non HD tv.
But isn’t responsiveness the only aspect that asks for video presentation?
Other aspects, like -for example- the good looks are communicated very well through screenshots, just like a series of screenshots can give a good (enough) indication of the use and possibilities of an app, except screensavers and GLTeapot of course 
Not entirely. Video in itself is a very powerful form of media communication. The combination of moving pictures and sound really catches people’s full attention unlike screenshots or separate audio tracks.
Screenshots on the other hand are ideal for conveying visual detail of course - which is completely lost with video.
I may put together some short videos to show off a couple aspects of Haiku - we’ll see.
Hmm, some demo .swf vids from the SkyOS website were better than I thought. Perhaps it’s the way YouTube and Google Video compress that causes irritating illegible menus, blurry icons etc.
Another thing is that I overlooked the usefulness of video in showing how things are done specific to the OS.
Here’s to a good quality haiku-os.org video section some day,
Cheers,
-Meanwhile
New Flash 9 players can actually play H.264 content - as an example you can play the HD movie trailers from the Apple site in Flash. The whole flash platform is not ideally suited to watching video (CPU usage is pretty high as really it’s a general-purpose vector graphics renderer rather than something optimised for video) but as it’s so commonly installed and plays a standard format it is a very good option.
I’m planning a video gallery for my private website that will have all the content as H.264. The default player will be flash-based which will work for the huge majority of people, the VLC plugin will also be an option, as will a simple direct download, all of the same file. Aren’t open specifications great?!
As for YouTube, they recompress video a lot and also use the older Flash 7+ video format (based on a Sorenson codec) to obtain wider browser support. I guess the HQ versions they offer for some of the videos are probably H.264.
“But isn’t responsiveness the only aspect that asks for video presentation?”
No, what we need to do is get the word out about Haiku. Most people haven’t heard of it or even BeOS and even if they did, they might have a very superficial understanding. Some people might think that Haiku is just about copying an old OS and that all the good stuff is already in the other OS’s.
Something like “Firefox flicks” would be too early as this is still alpha. But we would like to attract developers as well as idealists (academics, UI thinkers, people and companies that don’t like the idea of Microsoft owning everything, etc) who would like a say in a future OS.
There are way to few Haiku vids on Youtube. Uploading vids to Youtube is a very fast, cheap and easy way to spread the word about Haiku. Video quality isn’t really that important actually.
I like the idea of using video to show off Haiku. Lots of people browse YouTube. And you can always promote it with links and embedded Youtube videos on any site. Perhaps the Haiku project could formally set up a Youtube Channel to display volunteer Haiku videos (upon approval, of course).
Personally, I haven’t done much with video, but since I set up an account with YouTube (originally so I could comment on YouTube videos), I’m tempted to try and figure out how to make my own videos.
A good idea. My thoughts:
There are enough YouTube vids talking about Haiku generally. Symmetric multiprocessing bla bla bla. what we should do is create little clips, and I mean really short ones, that highlight very Haiku-specific apps and features and present them in a practical way.
- StyledEdit: we take this thing for granted, but it really is amazing when you think about it.
- don’t talk abstractly about extended attributes, show how they can be used to find the exact file you need. Show how you can create a new filetype in seconds.
- Stack 'n Tile. Enough said. Show it to the world.
- Package management - the devs would probably prefer us to wait until Haikudepot is all finished before we show it off to the world. But there is a lot to show. drop the hpkg into the right folder. Boom, it is installed!
No doubt there already are such things on YouTube and feel free to post the links, but YouTube thrives on quantity and diversity, not quality. TWO YouTube videos on S&T are more likely to get noticed than one and TEN of them are going to end up in the YouTube right-hand sidebar creating the impression of a mass movement. Hundreds of short Youtube videos, even if in low-res, will give more of a multiplier effect than a single beautiful HD video. But if you can do HD, please do that too!
Enough talking. I need to put my money where my mouth is and start practising my strictly limited video skills with BeScreenCapture …