Messenger Lectures at The Feynman Lectures Website

[codelieb]

Hello everyone,

You can now watch Feynman's Messenger Lectures in Full HD video with a searchable autoscrolling transcript (and other cool features) at The Feynman Lectures Website. Here are some useful links:

information about Feynman's Messenger Lectures with links to videos :
www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/messenger.html

direct link to video viewer:
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/fml.html

restarts the viewer where you last stopped watching:
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/fml.html#r

(For other interesting ways to start the viewer please see its 'Help' tab.)

- enjoy!

Michael A. Gottlieb
Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition
www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

 

[jedishrfu]

Wow, thanks for sharing! These are incredible lectures.

My favorite has been the one where he talks about three dimensions with a mathematician and is told they have an n-dimensional framework and he says no no I just want three dimensions but later after some further insight realizes he needs more dimensions and sheepishly asks the mathematician for more help.

 

[codelieb]

My favorite has been the one where he talks about three dimensions with a mathematician and is told they have an n-dimensional framework and he says no no I just want three dimensions but later after some further insight realizes he needs more dimensions and sheepishly asks the mathematician for more help.

Ha, ha! Yeah - that's a good one!

 

[geordief]

Thanks.I had been hoping those lectures would be enhanced one day.

They were too hard for me to follow till now.

 

[hutchphd]

Thanks for the URLs. The bells playing "Far above Cayuga's waters" at the beginning of the Messenger Lectures brought a rush of nostalgia to my aging brain. I do love those lectures (and the 1962 Pontiacs in front of Thurston Hall)

 

[codelieb]

Thanks.I had been hoping those lectures would be enhanced one day.

They were too hard for me to follow till now.

I'm not sure what you mean by "enhanced." The videos themselves have not been altered in any way. Perhaps you mean the addition of the autoscrolling transcript? In any case, I'm glad it helps.

 

[codelieb]

I do love those lectures (and the 1962 Pontiacs in front of Thurston Hall)

Ha, ha! Where I live some people still drive cars that old!

 

[geordief]

I'm not sure what you mean by "enhanced." The videos themselves have not been altered in any way. Perhaps you mean the addition of the autoscrolling transcript? In any case, I'm glad it helps.

I meant the sound and vision was improved.

Is that what they call "digitally remastered " ?

Felt like it had been "cleaned up" to me.

 

[codelieb]

The videos displayed by our viewer were made at Full HD (1080p) resolution from a copy of the original films.

Offhand, I can think of three reasons other versions you have seen don't look as good: (1) they are Nth generation copies for N>1, (2) they are displayed at lower resolutions than we display them, (3) they are just very badly made. For example, you can find many copies of these films on Youtube, but none (that I have examined) have resolution higher than 480p, and in most cases it's 360p, while many are of such poor quality they give one the impression that they are Nth generation copies for N>>1, or just very badly made.

 

[geordief]

The videos displayed by our viewer were made at Full HD (1080p) resolution from a copy of the original films.

Offhand, I can think of three reasons other versions you have seen don't look as good: (1) they are Nth generation copies for N>1, (2) they are displayed at lower resolutions than we display them, (3) they are just very badly made. For example, you can find many copies of these films on Youtube, but none (that I have examined) have resolution higher than 480p, and in most cases it's 360p, while many are of such poor quality they give one the impression that they are Nth generation copies for N>>1, or just very badly made.

Whatever it is ,it has helped.The scrolling text is a great facility.

If they do a biopic on Feynman I will suggest Tom Hanks

 

[codelieb]

Whatever it is ,it has helped.

Thanks.

It's nice to get some feedback. I also got some from Youtube, where I left comments on some of the more popular postings of the Feynman Messenger Lectures films. So far all the feedback has been positive, which makes me happy.

This application presented many challenges. I worked on it petty much every day for 4 months. I had some help with the graphics design and artwork: Natallia Pietrenka, a graphics artist in Minsk who has done a lot of work for us as a volunteer, did her magic once again, and made our application pretty! I also had some help with the transcripts: Michael Godfrey, another regular volunteer, defined where all the paragraphs start, and made many corrections for accuracy, grammar and punctuation.

I wrote all the (HTML/CSS/JS) code myself, and tried to do a very good job of it, so the application includes many features, such as graceful degradation and error recovery, that are not immediately apparent to the user, except under special circumstances. I was also careful to make the application as mobile-friendly as I could. My goal is to make the material universally available, easy to use and easy to link to, so that more people can enjoy Feynman's wonderful Messenger Lectures, which are strongly related to (a subset of the lectures in) The Feynman Lectures on Physics: in fact they are identical in many places.

The scrolling text is a great facility.

The transcripts are actually built on the fly from subtitles, when you open a video (on most platforms) or when you start playing one (under iOS). If you enable the subtitles in the video controls you can see that the currently highlighted text in the transcript is identical to the currently displayed subtitle.

 

[geordief]

Thanks.

It's nice to get some feedback. I also got some from Youtube, where I left comments on some of the more popular postings of the Feynman Messenger Lectures films. So far all the feedback has been positive, which makes me happy.

This application presented many challenges. I worked on it petty much every day for 4 months. I had some help with the graphics design and artwork: Natallia Pietrenka, a graphics artist in Minsk who has done a lot of work for us as a volunteer, did her magic once again, and made our application pretty! I also had some help with the transcripts: Michael Godfrey, another regular volunteer, defined where all the paragraphs start, and made many corrections for accuracy, grammar and punctuation.

I wrote all the (HTML/CSS/JS) code myself, and tried to do a very good job of it, so the application includes many features, such as graceful degradation and error recovery, that are not immediately apparent to the user, except under special circumstances. I was also careful to make the application as mobile-friendly as I could. My goal is to make the material universally available, easy to use and easy to link to, so that more people can enjoy Feynman's wonderful Messenger Lectures, which are strongly related to (a subset of the lectures in) The Feynman Lectures on Physics: in fact they are identical in many places.
The transcripts are actually built on the fly from subtitles, when you open a video (on most platforms) or when you start playing one (under iOS). If you enable the subtitles in the video controls you can see that the currently highlighted text in the transcript is identical to the currently displayed subtitle.

Oh ,I didn't realize you were involved in the creation of this .

Double,treble thanks in that case!

Yes Feynman is a wonderful instructor (and entertainer)

In the Law of Gravitation lecture at the top of the list I notice that his movement (locomotion) seems restricted.Was he quite ill at that stage or did he just have a bad back at the time?

 

[codelieb]

Oh ,I didn't realize you were involved in the creation of this .
Double,treble thanks in that case!

You're welcome!

(I write all the code for The Feynman Lectures Website. Before I became FLP's Editor I was a software consultant for 27 years.)

Yes Feynman is a wonderful instructor (and entertainer)
In the gravity lecture at the top of the list I notice that his movement (locomotion) seems restricted. Was he quite ill at that stage or did he just have a bad back at the time?

These films were made in 1964, long before Feynman became ill from the cancer that killed him in 1989. To the best of my knowledge he never had back problems. And he doesn't appear to me to be restricted in his movements! Nor to David Politzer, who recently commented in a Youtube interview how the camera operators couldn't keep Feynman in the frame because he was so animated!

 

[geordief]

I have been spreading the good news

http://www.thescienceforum.com/links/50272-newly-presented-feynman-lectures.html

 

[codelieb]

I have been spreading the good news
http://www.thescienceforum.com/links/50272-newly-presented-feynman-lectures.html

Thanks!