[MPlayer-users] mencoder, scaling a video smaller

[nathan bullock]

I have an avi video that is currently 720x480. I am converting this to mp4.

I have converted it in two different ways. One I leave it at 720x480,
the other way is that I scale it down to 408x272. The big surprise was
that both ways give me an almost identical size of file (around 400
MB).

Shouldn't the second method produce a significantly smaller file? I
must be doing something wrong.

mencoder -quiet -ofps 30000/1001 -af lavcresample=24000 -of lavf -oac
lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts aglobal=1:vglobal=1:vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=aac
-vf harddup -lavfopts
format=psp:i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames $1 -o
$OUT.tmp.avi

mencoder -quiet -ofps 30000/1001 -af lavcresample=24000 -of lavf -oac
lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts aglobal=1:vglobal=1:vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=aac
-vf scale=408:272,harddup -lavfopts
format=psp:i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames $1 -o
$OUT.tmp.avi

Nathan