[MPlayer-users] 3 pass encoding: scaling and bitrate

[Thomas]

Marcos Dione wrote:
>     i thought, and excuse my ignorance here, that scaling from 720x480
> to 640x416 (or similar) would use less 'bits per frame' (note the
> quotes), so the movie at a certain bitrate would occupy less @ the
> second size, so letting me bumping the bitrate a little to fit again the
> cd size.
> 
>     hmmm, seems like I should read more... :(

When encoding in VBR mode downscaling makes the files shorter.