Any impressions to share? Useful, pretty, neat but ... ?
I used this once to illustrate software development work to non-technical colleagues. It succeeded in showing them how many small changes from many people come together into the final product.
I liked using it as a motivational tool, to remind myself how far a project had gone and how I'd contributed, but that's about it
Pretty neat, not that useful because non-interactive video visualizations rarely are. Also can be used to visualize other things. I've used it to show forum activity for example.
Non-interactive video visualizations were useful for decades before interactive ones became available, and still are when done well (which isn't as rare as you imply). They also reach a much wider audience.
Pretty, neat, attracts crowds for once or twice. Didn't know how to make use of it.
I have used it several times when presenting the stuff we have done at my current job (i.e. show how we have grown from a 2 person startup to a 15 Engineer shop). Undergrads like it a lot.
The only thing that I think it is missing is having a "size" of each node to represent the size of the file. That will give a lot more visibility on changes.