I almost forgot about this thread... sorry.

The second video did, in fact, have motion blur added to it which, in my opinion, helps makes things a bit smoother (and more action-packed). Adding the effect does not increase the file size, but does increase the render time by a very large amount. However, I've since been working on some other recording and rendering techniques that I'm pretty pleased with, so I doubt I'll be going with the motion blur.

Thanks, again, for the feedback.