Removing unnecessary bitrate?

[Slim_Jim]

So i've edited some films in Premiere Pro and used Adobe Media Encoder to export it to mpeg2 320x240 (it sure looks like crap but the quality wasn't very important) but didn't bother to look at the settings any further. However, the clips turn out HUGE in filesize, even though their low resolution and the compression (mpeg2). So I found this article: http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/tutorial/bitrate.html and it says a bitrate higher than 2000 is just a waste of space when using SIF. I look through the export settings and see that the bitrate is set to 6000.

Unfortunately i've deleted the source files so I cannot export again with lower bitrate, but is it possible to re-encode the clips to the lower bitrate without any quality loss? Currently i've got about 30 clips I want to burn to a DVD, the filesize is about this: a 3-minute clip at 140MB, a 1-minute at 65MB and a 25-minute clip at over 1GB!!.. In my opinion this is WAY too big considering the resolution (320x240) and I'm having problems fitting them to a DVD. So there must be a way to "cut away" all this unnecessary bitrate that is just adding to the filesize, or at least re-encode the clips without any quality loss.

Suggestions?

[Baldrick]

Nope, you will lose quality. But try reencode and see how it looks like, use a good mpeg encoder like tmpgenc plus, mainconcept mpeg encoder.

[bugster]

You will lose quality, but it may not be noticeable. I think re-jig will do what you want.

BTW, 320x240 is NOT valid for DVD, you should have done 352x240. If your clips really are 320x240, you WILL have to re-encode.

[Richard_G]

and as he is in Sweden, a PAL country, they need to be 352 x 288 to be DVD compliant.

[bugster]

and as he is in Sweden, a PAL country, they need to be 352 x 288 to be DVD compliant.

I didn't notice that, you are correct, thanks

[Slim_Jim]

I was actually going to ask about that, what the standard PAL format were, now I know, thanks...

I tried Re-Jig, works OK, but can someone tell me why the clips become "shorter" when in fact they don't? The original length of a clip was 1:43, the "Re-jigged" one was 0:50, although Media Player played it as usual... maybe it won't affect the final result on DVD but it sure is wierd...