I'm a novice with regards to video; I freely admit that. I have the HV20; I love what I see on the screen. I love what I see when I import the footage. I hate what I see when I try to export the footage. I'm guessing that the issues are my lack of understanding about what settings to use for exporting. I'm currently using Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 and I find I can't create small enough files for sharing (ie 150 seconds = 12mb) and when I go larger I still end up with motion artifacts.

Any thoughts on how I should be exporting?

That's sort of tough to know when you haven't told us your export settings ! :)