Making smaller MPEG-1 files

[Jim_Gunn]

I'm using TMPGEnc 2.5 and I'm having a wonderful result encoding high quality MPEG 1 files derived from my DVDs. My goal is to use the finished MPEG-1s for strictly web delivery. (I don't need to make VCDs, just cut them up into multiple MPEG 1 files) The files I create with the default settings are NTSC 352 x 240 29.97 frame/sec. with a bit rate of CBR 1150 and stereo audio at 192 kb and they look great. The only problem is that they are quite large and maybe too high quality. They take up about 10 MB per minute of video, so that a five minute video is almost 50 Mb amd a twenty minute video takes up about 200 Mb. What are the settings that I can change in TMPGEnc 2.5 to wind up with a still decent quality but smaller file size? I'd like to try to get them half the file size if that is possible to do without sacrificing too much quality. I know that I can halve the bit rate to 650 Kb and wind up with a file size that is about half, but is there any better way to do it? Thanks in advance.

[gd_nimrod]

The video bitrate is exactly what you need to change. However the 650 CBR is too low, try putting at least 800 for reasonable quality... but you should also try lowering the audio quality to save those few extra MB.