Youtube

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.