SVN was the reason most people when I was in college didn't use source control at all. It was painful to install on Windows. There weren't good hosts for it. (CSV at least had bad old SourceForge.) Once you had it installed and had settled on a host computer (and SVN needs a host), configuring your repositories in it was a whole new mess. SVN is definitely not "simpler".
With git you can install and git init anywhere and go you have source control. Moving commits to another machine gets us into the complications way above of learning GitHub and tools for GitHub, but in terms of 0-60 on "start a repository so you can commit changes" it's really hard to beat.
>pausing the lecture to really understand everything
no doubt in 2001 we had maybe <1% classes available as pre-recorded. this seems like a good foundational approach, better than "just take notes and pause". What if you are in- you know- an actual lecture? I took copious notes but had no review process or built in repetition (which this does).
That is more of a challenge :). This is why I think pre-recorded lectures are a superior form of teaching. They can be tweaked and revisioned to convey information in the most lucid way possible. Meatspace should be reserved for interactive QA sessions. Schools that accomplish this have a pedagogical advantage over everyone else.
Bar that, I recommend what you do is record the lecture audio while jotting down the major points (note taking apps like Notability work great for this). After the lecture re-review the audio, make sure you understand everything thoroughly, adding any additional notes that are required. This requires having to go through the lecture twice. If you are comfortable in the subject you can probably take sufficient notes during the lecture without having to listen to it again. Then before the exam, go through your notes and make sure you understand it.
