Why is $\sum_{j=0}^{\lfloor\log (n-1)\rfloor}2^j$ in $\Theta (n)$?
If you have a series of numbers that are consecutive power of 2s, like $1+2+4+8+16+\cdots+2^k$ you get as sum $2^{k+1}-1$. You can either see this by looking at the formula for the geometric series or you can prove this by induction.

Then the statement of the lectures follows, since here $k=\lfloor \log (n-1) \rfloor$. Therefore the sum is less than $2n$.