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Stanford University now has a Youtube channel, with free access to HD video of full courses on everything from dynamical systems to quantum entanglement. More conferences and workshops are videotaping their talks. What are videos online that you think everyone should know about?

I'll seed this with a few answers to presentations that are mostly expository, but what I'm hoping might happen is that this community wiki could turn into a resource to share excellent presentations of new research, as well as a place to learn (or reinforce) background in an unfamiliar area.

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  • $\begingroup$ Microsoft Research also has a youtube channel. I also like Dominic Verity's talk on category theory for programmers. Asking everyone to watch the same material seems like a bad idea because it will reduce diversity and increase groupthink. $\endgroup$
    – isomorphismes
    Sep 11, 2013 at 21:46
  • $\begingroup$ Do we have any videos lectures related to basic approximation and randomized algorithms. $\endgroup$
    – Kumar
    Dec 1, 2014 at 6:56
  • $\begingroup$ Can someone make an ongoing thread for the latest conference/workshop talks? IPCO, ICALP, STOC, FOCS etc that are available online? $\endgroup$
    – Hao S
    May 24, 2022 at 17:25

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Timothy Gowers has a set of videos on Computational Complexity and Quantum Computation online.

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    $\begingroup$ I watched the first lecture in this series and find his explanation of Turing machines very awkward. Furthermore, he seems to suggest that circuits are somehow equal in power to TMs, which is not the case (unless there is more to them than he tells). He himself says he does not want to talk about "strange computation models" but rather about "familiar combinatorics" so I'd say these are rather maths, not TCS lectures. $\endgroup$
    – Raphael
    Oct 20, 2010 at 9:27
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    $\begingroup$ combinatorics is also part of TCS. $\endgroup$
    – Kaveh
    Apr 23, 2012 at 3:16
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    $\begingroup$ Is TCS not part of mathematics, broadly defined for sure? $\endgroup$
    – kodlu
    Apr 21, 2015 at 0:12
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    $\begingroup$ The sound quality is pathetic, amateur hour. $\endgroup$
    – William Hird
    Mar 23, 2020 at 7:31
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Richard Feynman's Messenger Lectures restored, with annotations, by Microsoft's Tuva Project. Full disclosure: I've only watched two so far; they were awesome. (Not really TCS, but I had to start with these.)

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    $\begingroup$ The Vega Science Trust (vega.org.uk) also has some excellent Feynman talks on video, as well as talks from a bunch of other scientists. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Fitzsimons
    Oct 19, 2010 at 15:39
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    $\begingroup$ I get told that my browser won't support the format (Silverlight). Sigh. $\endgroup$
    – Jim Hefferon
    Jun 21, 2012 at 21:20
  • $\begingroup$ @JimHefferon Does ubuntugeek.com/… work for you? $\endgroup$
    – Simd
    Jun 8, 2014 at 8:26
  • $\begingroup$ While I admire what looks like a heroic effort to get it to go, no, I have never tried it. Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – Jim Hefferon
    Jun 8, 2014 at 14:15
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Don Knuth's musings are great, always describing some amazing thing unknown to me before.

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    $\begingroup$ Can this videos be downloaded or do they have to be streamed using sliver light? $\endgroup$
    – Tyson Williams
    Sep 10, 2011 at 18:08
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    $\begingroup$ I feel like Knuth himself would disapprove of having them locked up in a proprietary format, and it sure is inconvenient for me. $\endgroup$
    – Max
    Oct 22, 2011 at 20:12
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    $\begingroup$ @Max not anymore :-) (I updated the link). $\endgroup$
    – didest
    Apr 20, 2015 at 22:35
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Stephen Boyd has his entire Stanford class on Convex Optimization online.

Some interesting comments and asides, covers same material as in his book.

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Dan Spielman's Nevanlinna Prize lecture at Hyderabad 2010. I got this link from a blog post by Timothy Gowers; the post contains several more video and text links to the 2010 ICM.

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There's a really interesting talk, given by Yuri Gurevich, on the Church-Turing thesis here.

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The video section of IAS is also a great source of online courses. One of my favorite is:
Ketan Mulmuley. On P vs NP, Geometric Complexity Theory, and the Riemann Hypothesis.

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FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science)

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  • $\begingroup$ @Diego de Estrada the site is down is there anywhere else I can find these videos? $\endgroup$
    – Hao S
    Apr 22, 2021 at 0:34
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I do not know if this is a video lecture that everyone should watch, but I have decided on watching these to learn some Algebraic Topology. Seems pretty good to me so far.

Algebraic Topology Lectures

EDIT (Added Later). Another nice set of video lectures

Here is another wonderful set of lectures by Erik Demaine. The course is called Planar Graph Algorithms and Beyond and is being taught by Erik Demaine, Shay Mozes, Christian Sommer and Siamak Tazari. They are also using some sections of Phil Kliens draft on Planar Graphs. I feel certain that it will make a great book after having seen the first two lectures.

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  • $\begingroup$ The course of Demaine et al. is amazing! $\endgroup$
    – didest
    Dec 2, 2011 at 1:00
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For people interested in quantum computation, the talks of QIP 2010 are available here: http://www.qip2010.ethz.ch/programme

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This might seem pretty preliminary to most people here, but I have greatly benefited from these since I am essentially self-taught. http://aduni.org/courses/theory/index.php?view=cw

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A completely hilarious video (and also very educational) is Serre's now-famous video on how to write mathematics badly.

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    $\begingroup$ «We are sorry but sevenload doesn't offer its service in your country». Sad… $\endgroup$
    – Artem Pelenitsyn
    Jun 1, 2011 at 17:36
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    $\begingroup$ @Artem: Maybe this link works for those outside the US? It works for me. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Kothari
    Jul 28, 2011 at 20:00
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I suggest the Channel 9 lectures: http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/c9+lectures

I like specially the lectures from Erik Meijer on functional programming.

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I enjoyed Scott Aaronson's lecture at Caltech titled "Quantum Computing and the Limits of the Efficiently Computable." This lecture, which was in honor of Feynman, rehashes what's common knowledge to users of this site but in a very clear and funny way.

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Quantiki has a nice video abstract site, where people are free to post a short video (3-6 minutes) describing their recent papers/preprints. As it is part of Quantiki, it largely focuses on quantum information/computation.

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STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing)

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    $\begingroup$ They're behind a paywall unfortunately... $\endgroup$
    – Anthony Leverrier
    Aug 12, 2011 at 21:04
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    $\begingroup$ This is probably an old news, but the videos are now available for free (but you have to register (again, for free)) t.co/LtTmi32 $\endgroup$
    – Danu
    Oct 23, 2011 at 21:39
  • $\begingroup$ @Danu how do I access the videos? I only see articles no videos $\endgroup$
    – Hao S
    May 28, 2021 at 1:43
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CCC (IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity)

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Erik Winfree describes DNA self-assembly and molecular programming at a plenary talk at ASPLOS 2008. Probably the best rigorous introduction to the theory of self-assembly currently online.

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Quantum Information, Computation and Complexity

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  • $\begingroup$ awesome! how was i waiting for watching video lectures on this topic...to think about watching lectures of Charles Bennet! A rare treat! Thanks again $\endgroup$
    – Akash Kumar
    Mar 2, 2011 at 1:44
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Erik Demaine has the video lectures up from his Fall 2010 course on geometric folding algorithms that follows the textbook he coauthored with Joseph O'Rourke:

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall10/lectures/

The lectures are great as you'd expect. But what really stands out to me is the production values: Each lecture's web page has embedded slides and lecture notes that play along in synchrony with the video. It uses high-definition HTML5 video with all the synchronization of slides and lecture notes done in JavaScript. Hopefully this will set a new standard of excellence.

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MIT's Youtube channel might be useful as well.

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  • $\begingroup$ The link is already mentioned in the question itself! $\endgroup$
    – Sadeq Dousti
    Apr 11, 2011 at 16:52
  • $\begingroup$ technically, only Stanford's youtube channel is mentioned $\endgroup$
    – Suresh Venkat
    Apr 11, 2011 at 16:56
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Just found the following two websites. They were recommended by some folks, but I have not evaluated them yet:

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I'm late to answer,but find Cristian Calude's lecture on Incompleteness excellent.

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CS Theory Toolkit by Prof. Ryan O'Donnell.
Great for newbies, and includes interesting viewing angle on various topics:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3J0oaFux3ZYpFLwwrlv_EHH9wtH6pnX

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General audience talk by Michael Sipser about $\mathsf{P}$ vs. $\mathsf{NP}$:

Michael Sipser, "Beyond Computation: The P vs NP Problem", CMI Public Lecture, 2006.

Also available on youtube.

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Videos from Banff events: this one is from the ongoing workshop on approximations.

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These are a lectures series about Quantum Computation by professor David Deutsch

http://www.quiprocone.org/Protected/DD_lectures.htm

Another great series on Quantum Computation by Michael Nielsen aimed at the average Joe who wants to learn about Quantum Computation

https://m.youtube.com/#/playlist?gl=US&hl=en&client=mv-google&list=PL1826E60FD05B44E4

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If you are interested in concurrency theory, programming languages or interactive theorem proving, I warmly recommend the videos of the recent Milner Symposium. For example J. Parrow's talk The pi-calculus: Origin and recent developments tells the beautiful story of the early development of $\pi$-calculus, and B. Pierce's talk Types à la Milner is a lucid overview of work on types for process calculi.

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Following resources are very helpful: http://www.aduni.org/courses/ (Discrete Math, Algorithms, theory of computation and many others) and http://erikdemaine.org/classes/ (I particularly like the algorithms on planar graphs lecture and advanced data structure lec here)

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