There has been an increase in reliance on pre-recorded lectures (PRL) as a source of learning in place of live-lectures (LL) in higher education today but whether PRL can effectively replace LL remains unknown. We tested how students performed in the exam questions when PRL replaced LL. While PRL+ group included those students who watched the video lectures, PRL-group was composed of students who either did not utilize these videos or accessed only briefly. Additional analysis involved the separation of exam questions, from both LL and PRL, into memory questions (MQ; basic factual details) and comprehension questions (CQ; requiring processing of the given information) and their comparisons. We did not find any significant difference in student performance between the LL and PRL groups as well as between LLMQ and PRL+MQ groups. However, students in the LL group performed significantly better on CQ compared to the PRL+ group (P<0.05). Furthermore, analysis of student performance between MQ and CQ among the PRL+ and PRL groups revealed that both groups performed significantly higher on MQ compared to CQ (p<0.01 between PRL+MQ and PRL+CQ and p<0.05 between PRL-MQ and PRL-CQ). These results suggest that LL helps students perform better on CQ, where it requires processing of given information compared to that of PRL. The effectiveness of PRL, at least from this study, is limited to mastering basic factual details but not suitable for complex conceptual processing and therefore may not fully be able to replace LL.