I don't think it is a hoax either. I feel like the video was probably a poor quality and it's taking a while to dress it up the best they can.
I'm sure John did the run, just feel there are probably issues with the video making it take longer. If he was initially recording it just as proof then he probably didnt care to much about the quality or setup of it, just wanted a document it. Now after the fact, the pool player wants to make money off of it, which doesn't shock me... a pool player with poor planning trying to make a nickel.
Ideally, this would have been handled as similar to his accustats video as possible. So with all the time and attempts it took to do this, he would have had to been a one man crew, but taking a little bit extra time at the beginning of the day would go along way in terms of the quality and marketability of the video.
Look at Early TAR for example. The SVB vs Corey race to 100. It was a single, high quality, camera mounted straight and never moved for the entire race. The quality looked great. Very aesthetically pleasing and easy to watch and this was over a decade ago.
Now look at John's current youtube vids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdiRXXjJwQE The video quality is a bit washed out in color. Blue cloth would have probably helped that some. The camera is slighly slanted as well. Maybe that part could be straightened/corrected in post. Just little things like that will take away from the marketability of it.
Any video is great as proof of it happening, but if you want people to buy it you are going to have to make it look good too.
I'm going to buy it regardless how it looks or how they decide to sell it, but I'm a pool fanatic. If you want the random pool player/league player to buy it, the production quality is going to have to be decent, and that and promotion of it isnt gong to be free either.
You have pool players making and selling a video of a pool player playing a dead game in a dead sport. Doesn't matter how much you polish it up, you'd be lucky to pull a couple thousand dollars in profit from it. With all that being said, (especially the quality and lack of real profit) the best option for this would be for free on Youtube or a couple bucks on Vimeo or something like that, just to get the views more then anything.