You bought a camcorder capable of recording full HD so why use it for anything less? Go ahead and record at 1920 x 1080 and save the files. You can always make a copy of the original file at a lower quality for viewing now and still have the originals to use in the future. Blu Ray burners are down to near $100 these days. You can buy a 1 terabyte HD for under a $100. Lack of storage capacity should not be a reason for not recording at the highest quality posswible. Get a bigger harddrive and replace the older, slower one you have now. A newer HD will run faster allowing better viewing and faster rendering of your videos.