So things to improve:

1. Make the video shorter, the question is what to remove? Maybe the kde homerun and system settings parts?
2. More prominent text - I can make the text bigger and so on, but I need to know what to put there and in this I need your help (propositions welcome).
3. Music - no problem I can change that, but I would like to hear more opinions from others first. Btw the license of the music in this video is cca

Good work. IMHO the video should follow a script that would outline common use cases of personas that we use to discuss usability.

For instance for the geek persona:

- login
- locate an html file on krunner
- open Kate editor
- do some minor edit
- preview
- change activity with plasmoids
- open dolphin to find images
- switch to first activity
- logout

I believe we should create a few small videos script as above on par with the defined personas. That way we can encourage more people to join our community.

lucas wrote:So things to improve:

1. Make the video shorter, the question is what to remove? Maybe the kde homerun and system settings parts?

Perhaps less of the window switching stuff. Many of the visuals there, while they look good, are quite dated (harkening back to windows vista and early OSX/iTunes). Keep the virtual desktop switching stuff - ours is simply the best implementation of virtual desktops and window management on any platform IMO.

Other ideas might include:

• A tighter zoom in to the part of the screen showing a particular feature instead of the entire desktop. That way things might look a little less static and also potentially show off the visual design of the icons, controls, etc. while demonstrating another feature (killing two birds with one stone and all that).
• Some very subtle text zooming/translations/fade. I think this can help the video stay "alive" during transitions - as long as it's subtle.

I think it's pretty damn cool that you've taking a stab at this lucas.

What about something with a similar style to this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RwvrCfe2nM

Maybe we could promote the new KF5 and Plasma 5 together with Kubuntu 15.04 (in the same video, like Ubuntu with Unity). I also think that the KDE webpage should experiment a visual change (Kubuntu's webpage too).

Well personally I think as a first attempt to be improved, tweaked & changed it's a really great start - . I don't think it's ridiculously long either.

Two things that i would change are:

1 - Whilst the visual design & animation side is superb, IMO I think the main theme of the video should be KDE's configurability & flexability. The other DEs & distros are always adding eye candy (animations, transparency effects, desktop effects etc. etc. etc.) and i think if we go down the path of saying 'look how fancy this new effect is' then we're not getting across the HUGE advantage of KDE over all of the others.

Gnome, Ubuntu (i know it's not a DE but...) etc have all become very 'locked down' - use them the way the designers want you to or else. KDE on the other hand is very much 'do it the way you want', there's several ways to do most things (switching between windows?), just use the one that works for you and if you don't like something like the task manager there's the Alterenatives system (i did see that on the video ). If the average Gnome/Ubuntu user saw a KDE promo with some nice animations they'd probably think 'KDE looks nice but there's no point switching' BUT if we showed them how adaptable, flexible & easy to tweak KDE is (and looks really good as well) they'd probably think 'i'm fed up being told how to use my own computer - maybe i'll give KDE a try', especially if we can emphasise how easy it is to make changes, tweak settings & create/delete/undo widgets (i saw that bit too). I suppose what i'm saying is that alot of the individual pieces that would get the 'you can make it your own' message across are already in the video - but i think we should re-order those pieces & tie it all together with a really strong 'KDE - the desktop that you can make whatever you want' narative.

2 - Near the begining of the video is a bit about window switching & in there (between 16 & 21 seconds into the video) is the switching effect that's nice, but it's like a Windows Vista advert from years ago. If we had that effect in the video as an example of one of the different ways that you can switch windows, 'pick the one that you like most' that would come across really well - someone watching it would think 'oh look they can do it that way - that's what i do in windows now, great' - having it near the beginning then of the video says to me 'look at this cutting edge window switching effect', the viewer would probably just think 'that's just like Vista, if they think that's worthy of emphasising in their video then i don't think i'll bother watching the rest of it'.

Personally I think the functionality & flexability of KDE is what we should be really shouting about - yes it looks fantastic but IMO we should focus on the more functional side - that's what will win people over.

How about we all collaborate on a script - complete with text to appear in the video explaining what's so great about what's going to be shown - and then we'll see where the (really great!) footage lucas created fits into that script?

Hi again, and thanks for all your comments. Here is an updated version http://youtu.be/hlNyxYQ6x-0. It is now about 2 minutes long.
Changes:
1. Removed vista like switcher,
2. Removed krunner, because there is a bug where no shadow is paint around it (probably nvidia driver issue in my case)
3. Removed the system settings part, because of another bug (color of the stars in the kde get hot new staff window is all black)
4. No more pixeled video, all is now crystal clear
5. No music and no text. Here I need your help asap
So now we have the raw material on which we can work. Of course I can record something new, but it will take longer than editing already existing video.

My earlier point wasn't that we should ditch the bit about the 'Vista' window switcher but to rearrange things so that it comes across as 'look this is one of the many ways that you can switch windows - it's so flexible' (good) rather than 'look what we've managed to do - we're so proud of this!!' (bad - maybe it was cutting edge years ago but not now!) which is kind of how it comes across having it right at the beginning.

i personally think we should think very carefully (and discuss it as a group??) before getting rid of things because of minor bugs - for example krunner is something to shout about, it seems daft not to include it because visually it very good but not absolutely perfect (although we want to make a good impression so any really obvious visual bugs shouldn't get in there or we'll look a bit stupid )

As a rule of thumb I'd say the cursor must not be shown. If you need to point toward what is seen there is something wrong.

ken300 wrote:My earlier point wasn't that we should ditch the bit about the 'Vista' window switcher but to rearrange things so that it comes across as 'look this is one of the many ways that you can switch windows - it's so flexible' (good) rather than 'look what we've managed to do - we're so proud of this!!' (bad - maybe it was cutting edge years ago but not now!) which is kind of how it comes across having it right at the beginning."

I removed two window switchers to be more precise, and I did it mostly under the influence of Heiko and alake comments

Heiko Tietze wrote:As a rule of thumb I'd say the cursor must not be shown. If you need to point toward what is seen there is something wrong.

This means that I need to record all the material once again and to do that I need a complete script with text as colomar suggested. So please write the concrete proposals

Looks lovely lucas. I've release Plasma 5.2 now so please do spread your video around or let me know if I should help doing that.

As others have said this includes a bit too much stuff which isn't part of 5.2 but is from older releases or part of something else. I think the way to do videos like this would be a start with a feature list, which we usually make for the beta annoucement and work all those in.

I actually prefer the first version of it with the text on the screen, gives some context.

Kubuntu will probably be the first distro to release with Plasma 5 on it in April, do you think you'd be interested in making a video for that release? It'll be the first time users will get a chance to use it without the faff of adding extra download places.

Ok so here is the "final version" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z2u1pM8PeY It is basically a shorter version of the first video with a few improvements (better quality, more visible text etc). Just want to say that I really appreciate all the feedback from you. Your comments/ opinions will help me in the future. Next time I will try to incorporate your suggestions more closely. This time I ran out of time . Feel free to spread the video as much as you want

Ps I removed two previous versions so please do not link them.

kde-jriddell wrote:I've release Plasma 5.2 now so please do spread your video around or let me know if I should help doing that.

It would be nice. As for the Kubuntu promo, why not, just tell me what and when

So, so happy you decided to put this together lucas! Fantastic work, I love it!

Great work indeed, and it got better with each iteration!
Next time we'll plan ahead earlier and produce a script, then it will be even more awesome

Could you upload also an HD version of it? It's the kind of video you want to watch full screen, but then 360p doesn't look so good.

colomar wrote:Could you upload also an HD version of it? It's the kind of video you want to watch full screen, but then 360p doesn't look so good.

The native resolution of the video is full hd and I can choose it without trouble in the youtube player.