What is the difference in educational experience between listening to a lecture (with no Q&A) and reading about the same concept in a text book?

I have been on a knowledge-seeking spree on diverse topics- taken up MOOCs and read books of research on subjects other than my academic majors. Reading is a habit one develops way before one starts to watch video lectures. This is almost always true for people in their early 20s and older. I have met a few people who strongly prefer reading books over watching videos, because they think that videos are somewhat a shortcut to learning and their philosophy is that it is always important to learn anything the hard way. I have also met people younger to me, who are more comfortable with technology and who think reading books is unnecessarily tedious and boring. The major difference between the two would be the amount of imaginative thinking one should put, in understanding the concept at hand. While watching a video lecture, the visual aids like the powerpoint presentations, help you visualize a concept and grasp how it works, much quicker than a book and with much less mental exercise. Reading a book is mentally more taxing because it is on the reader to build the visual image- translating words into visual imagination. In my experience, I am always strong with subjects I have learnt by reading. Because it requires a greater mental effort, the retention is much more than with that of lectures. I tend to forget what I learn with video lectures sooner. Lectures are more volatile. I have grown comfortable with both methods of learning. For me, it depends on the subject, my prior knowledge about the subject, availability of resources, deadlines if any, my time and location comforts, etc. Subject, depth and prior knowledge:Generally, if I am trying to learn something that I know nothing about, I prefer books. It depends on how much I want to learn. If I am just curious about tidbit questions, like "What are microcredits and how do they work? How do banks work? What is recession and what caused it?", I go for small to medium sized videos from famous YouTube channels or video lectures. But as I develop a deeper interest, with questions regarding Financial markets, the economic cycle in different societal levels (family, city, country and world), poverty, economics related to business strategies, etc, I prefer reading specific academic papers and books based on strong research. (For instance, Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo). Availability of resources:I am a Comp Sci major. It is a field that has a great rate of advancement. The developments are so quick that by the time a concept develops into something that is presentable and documented, it is already obsolete. I cannot wait for books to be published. The available resources are mostly videos, or in case of coding, only a limited piece of documentation. I have had interests for which the de facto text books have been out of my reach or too expensive. For instance, I wanted to study Forensics and could not find quality reading material around. I took a Nanyang University course on Coursera. Time and Location Comforts:I always prefer long spells of free time if I am pursuing an interest and reading books about it. If my routine at the time does not support me with those long spells, I go for videos. By experience, I have developed an intuition towards choosing my medium of learning without considering all the above criteria consciously. So, consider these questions, What is your field of interest? Subjects like Physics and Mathematics don't change often. There have been a lot of developments in documenting the subjects better and making them learnable. With such subjects, choosing a good text book is a much better option. If it is a relatively new subject and the documentation is sparse, choosing videos is a better option. How much time can you dedicate towards your course? If you have a major chunk of the day towards it, I believe learning the hard way should be of priority. Most part of my answer consists of the external experiences of learning with different media, because the question seemed like you are trying to make a choice between the two. If your orientation is more towards the internal learning process itself, write a comment. I'll try to say more about that.