I want to start out with a caveat for anyone thinking of getting this or subscribing to Jason's site. If you are going to be taking Calc 1 and 2 at the college level, you would be best served to get both this DVD and the Advanced Calculus 2 DVD because, depending on your school, what is covered may not be in the same order as what Jason has laid out. Of course, if you subscribe to the site you will get all of the lessons and much more content than what was originally included on the DVDs.This DVD basically covers derivatives and integrals. It goes very in-depth into both those topics and covers all the main differentiation and integration rules you need to know. Again you need to keep in mind that this is a supplement and does not cover everything you will see in class. I can only use my class as a reference, but we started with a review of functions, then went into limits, then derivatives, and will finish with an introduction to integration. There are also a couple of the topics covered on the Advanced Calc DVD set that will be covered in my Calc I class, which is why I am using that DVD set along with this one. Plus I plan on continuing on to Calc II, so I will eventually end up using both.The one big topic from first-semester calculus that Jason does not go into much is the topic of limits. He explicitly says at the beginning of the video that is he not covering everything and explains why he excludes most of the material on limits in this set. He has, however, subsequently added a limits tutor, that will cover the material that was missing from this DVD, which is helpful because limits are covered extensively at the beginning of the semester before you get into the differentiation rules. If you try to study just from this, skip class, and do not do the problems in the book, the first test or two will be a disaster. So don't fall into that trap. And while Jason does not cover most of the limit concepts that you will have to go through in class, I found knowing the material on the DVD ahead of time helpful to understand the "big picture" limit concepts even though I did not know the mechanical process for taking limits ahead of time. He also does not cover all the types of applied problems (word problems)that you will see in class.
Ultimately whether you find this DVD useful will depend in large part on how you learn. This is basically like watching a lecture on TV. Obviously, you cannot interact with Jason as you can with a tutor, and you are limited to the problems that he works out. Some of his problems will match what you get in class, while others may not. I look at these DVDs as showing the basics and presume I will encounter more complicated problems in the book and on the exams. I use them before class to get an idea of what is going on, then from time to time during the semester if there is a concept I did not get completely in class from my teacher, or if I need to brush up on something. If used in that way, and if your learning style is conducive to that kind of presentation, this will be a great investment.
As I said above I strongly recommend that you get this and the advanced calculus tutor dvd if you are taking classes at the college level. There are things in that DVD set like the L'Hospital's rule and inverse trig functions that you will likely go over in first-semester calculus that you will not get on this DVD. The section on L'Hospital's rule will also give some insight into limits. The other concept that Jason does not go into much at all on this DVD is the "technical" process for taking integrals. He does explain it very briefly, but he does not go into detail about how to use the sum of areas of approximating rectangles to calculate the integral. In my class we only got through the first chapter on integration, the first three sections of which deals with that concept. Then we got to the fundamental theorem of calculus, (the second part of which is what Jason does many examples of), and integration by substitution which is also covered in depth here. Many of the sections on integration that are on this DVD will be covered in second-semester calculus (calculus II) at the college level.
In all, this DVD covers about 80% of what you can expect to see on the final for the first semester of college-level calculus. There are definitely things not presented on the DVD that will be covered in class, so again use this as a supplement, not a replacement for going to class and doing homework problems. This is the material that if you can master it you will do well in the class. Mastering this material will also help you understand the concepts that will be covered in class that are not presented here.
