I just used my desktop to capture raw avi flies to my 16 gig thumb drive. It won't play back on the thumb drive without jumping, but transfering the video footage to the hard drive it plays without a glitch. Is this a reliable way to record? Anyone ever use a laptop with this method?

Yes I have used this method. Is it reliable? Not in my opinion, at least not for crucial projects. It jumps due to the lower bandwidth of USB as IDE/SATA interfaces are much faster. I would recommend capturing to hard disk and using the thumb drive for transfer (sneaker-netting) only. IMHO

Dear Dan,

I agree with Macro.

USB is not a great tool for recording video. Firewire is specifically designed for this purpose, while USB can not guarantee the proper bandwidth for your data.

I would not risk any important footage, but it is certainly ok to test.