I like it. I never really thought much about why my braided rope had those weird curly-qs. Now I know. I was actually looking for a video that would show a good way to tie up (in order to shorten the length) the remainder of a rope where one end is fixed and cannot be accessed. I'll give this figure-8 thing a try & see what happens, but if life goes the way it's been going I'll probably have to invent some rope-related technique for this.
I learned this as a teenager working a crab boat. The last thing you want is a tangled up float line crashing around your feet as it whips over the side. You could end up 30+ feet under in a couple seconds.
Interesting. However, I have for decades used what I think might be called a mountaineer's coil, which is the same way that commercial divers handle their hoses and is used for electrical wires. I won't try to describe it here. But it works well, especially if you need to toss a line, such as a rappel line when climbing. Also, flacking the rope back and forth in your hand works well and doesn't have the possibility of creating knots when the coil of the rope snags the bight of another coil.
You can adjust the youtube playback speed: super handy for times like this, but once you understand just how simple it is to do you will realize how fast it naturally is to do it yourself. I can attest that when you are used to doing it it's hard to slow the motion down for demonstration.
The only thing I disagree with is intentionally adding ANY twist. It does look prettier that way, and though you will probably get away with it, it's unnecessary. Just grab it and place it the same orientation in your other hand and let it fall naturally: stiff line will flake all by itself, softer line will fall into a coil with the bottom ~90° off plane from the top (it will fall into a figure 8 coil rather than a figure 8 flake as soon as gravity is removed from the equation, like when it's dropped on the deck), but I don't know of any reason that's not ok.
