One of my goals in learning graphics development was to immerse myself in the understanding of computer graphics starting with a core mathematical foundation, specifically linear algebra. One of the techniques that I felt would be beneficial in achieving this goal was to simply gather any lectures that I could find (specifically good ones) and extract the audio and import into my IPod so that I could have something to listen to when I am driving. The core lectures that I found were the following:

  1. CSCI E-234: Introduction to Computer Graphics and GPU Programming – Video (by Instructors: Hanspeter Pfister and Eric Chan). LINK:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/csci-e-234-introduction-to/id428958018
  2. Lectures by Dr.Sukhendu Das, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras. LINK: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL338D19C40D6D1732
  3. UC Davis Professor John Owens teaches this introduction to the design and analysis of the architecture of computer graphics systems. LINK:http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4A8BA1C3B38CFCA0
  4. Recordings from an introductory lecture about computer graphics given by Wolfgang Hürst, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, from November 2007 till January 2008. LINK:http://graphics20072008.blogspot.com/2007_11_25_archive.html
  5. Computer Graphics (ECS175) teaches the basic principles of 3-dimensional computer graphics by Kenneth Joy. LINK:http://itunes.apple.com/au/itunes-u/computer-graphics-fall-2009/id457893733

The first part was to acquire all the videos first. The ITunes education podcasts were easy downloads (MOV). The trickier videos were the Youtube specific videos. For Youtube videos, I downloaded a plugin for Firefox called DownloadHelper. I queued up the videos that I wanted to be downloaded and let plugin rip. Most of the files were of the FLV format which is a flash derivative.  I downloaded an open source application called “Handbrake.” This is a fantastic tool that allowed me to queue up a batch of files to transcode to an easier format like M4V.

Once I had all the video files, I loaded them up into Adobe Premiere Pro and exported the audio clip as MP3. After that, I just downloaded all of these lectures into my IPod and I have been listening to them in order since. Also, I purposely did some book keeping with the filenames so that these lectures would play nicely in order. Essentially, I gave the files a unique prefix specific to the type of lecture and then appended a triple digit to designate the order of the lecture. For instance:

hurst_001_intro_part1_mobile.mp3
hurst_002_intro_part2_mobile.mp3

This designated the computer graphics lectures given by Wolfgang Hürst at Utrecht University so that they would be sorted in the correct order.