do the programs automatically create new files when the limit is hit, to allow you to later perform lossless compression and stitch them together seamlessly
Welllllllll, nope. That is something I have been struggling with for awhile. I made many videos, mostly at 60fps, usually a minute long, sometimes as long as 3 and a half minutes using the UT codec with very little hard drive space. Saving them, moving them to flash or going ahead and converting them to MP4. That would bring them down to 100-300MB or so. Then doing a little editing or chopping ends off and trying to splice them all together. Over time I would forget what codec was used etc and managing them became even more difficult. I learned that H.264 codec for MP4s had the best compression. I had to do this for pretty much the same reason as you, I didn't want to do compressing with my processor at the same time I was flying around in LOD1. I would end up with many videos having "jumpy stars" in the back ground sky or even worse was terrible "banding" where gradients would posterize (using fewer different tones of color). It is all a learning process for me, I am sure there are better ways that I'm not familiar with or capable of. At this moment I am using a program to join about 2 dozen 300-500MB videos, each about 10-20 minutes long with fair to frustrating results. The method I am using right now is actually going back to AVI but with H.264 codec at 5000 bit rate (has a lot to do with banding I believe) with 60fps. This takes my system about 4 hours to do and I will need to do it a dozen times to make the 2 1/2 hour video and have it come out as an AVI that is less than 4GB and still keep me satisfied over the quality. Sigh. I'm at 77% and I'd like to go to bed early lol.... any way here is a link to that program, it is free with no watermarks, has every conceivable option and can join/convert to any file format with your own quality presets. Best of luck!
VSDC Free Video Editor:
Free video editing software
Oh, another free software program I use, that is a bit easier but with fewer options is Avidemux. With it I can use the Quantizing option under codec configuration and bump it up to 1.5 for a stronger effect on getting rid of banding, if I don't know or can change the file's bit rate.
Avidemux 2.6 - 64 bits:
More free video editing software
CPU: AMD FX-8350 8 core processor 4GHz / GPU: GeForce GT 730 @ 1920x1080, 60Hz with 1GB adapter RAM / RAM: Patriot Signature 4GB 1600MHz 240-Pin DDR3 (only 2GB work, don't buy it) / Motherboard: MSI 970 Gaming MS-7693