[MPlayer-users] newbie question: bitrate

[Yan Seiner]

I am a complete newbie at this, so excuse me if this is a dumb Q.

Could someone explain bitrate to me?   Here's what I'm trying to do:

Take a DVD or or videocassette, and rip it to a hard disk in a format
suitable for a small TV.

I've been playing with a resolution of 328x242 (OK on an NTSC TC), but I
still get files of about 1.2 GB, which seems enormously large, so I'm
guessing that I need to provide a bitrate suitable for that resolution.

What exactly is a bitrate, and how do I go about calculating a bitrate
suitable for such a low resolution?

Note that I am not interested in stuffing a movie onto a CD; I'm not
really concerned about how large the final product is.  I want it to be
as small as the resolution warrants.

Thanks,

--Yan