AVI to MPEG - reasonable size - NOT for VCD burn-SUGGESTIONS

[jsee18]

Have used TMPGEnc in the past to convert AVI to VCD-able MPEG - Anybody have setting suggestions to reduce the size of the MPEG output to as little as possible? NOT for VCD burn, but to play on a PocketTV program on a handheld. Quality MUCH less important than filesize.

Will admit that I don't really know TMPGEnc that well...just followed the excellent tutorial on this site...but don't know how to set the program to convert to smallest MPEG possible...

Help from the experts would be much appreciated in attaining "the dream" of being able to watch my "Seinfeld" and "Sopranos" AVIs on the hand-me-down portable I just lucked into.

Hope this isn't too off-topic, just thought someone here would know.

[Novacane]

First off, check out this tutorial http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/84759.php . This shows you how to make non standard vcds so that you can tweak the settings.

Once you get the hang of this, start playing around by lowering settings and running tests on small pieces of video. If you can get a 30 second piece of video to test on, you can check the file size and easily figure out approximately how much space your final files will take up. Also, you can check to make sure it looks and sounds alright.

As for the settings, I recommend the first thing you do is go into audio settings and set it to mono with a quality of 96 kbps or so. For the video settings, play with lowering the bitrate and the resolution. You may also want to trim the edges off a bit to make the overall picture look a bit bigger (tv shows are usually filmed at a slightly wider angle because a lot of the edges get trimmed off when viewed on most tvs).

That oughtta do it for ya!