Using my JVC 30k DVHS player I have transfered a video recorded in STD quality 15kbps mpeg2 file to my computer, when I try to Author this file it states that the bitrate is too high to be in spec. This makes sense to me. I understand this.

What I want my final file to be is 352x480 that is of substantially lower bitrate. So I can fit 4-6 hours of video per dvd. Should I just author an overly huge DVD, transcode using dvdshrink and live with 720x480?

Should I re-encode to 352x480 using TMPGenc? Wouldn't this be a very bad thing to do, basically adding more artifacts to the already compressed mpeg file? If i understand correctly even if I used the same bitrate and kept encoding the same mpg file over and over I would lose more and more quality, correct? So this would basically be a double encode.

Is there a way to just basically re-code, or resize the original file, without introducing more digital noise (basically just reduce the bitrate and resolution, without having to actually re-encode it?)