how to balance out between resolution, bit rate, and file size if we want to resize a video?
any tips/rule-of-thumb to do this?

let say i want to resize a file from 350mb to 260mb, what's the best bit rate, resolution, bits/pixel to use so that the quality loss is not too severe?
any tips?

Yeah, I also had read some posting in Doom9 and other forum.

Actually, I only hope to start experimenting the setting based on others experience. I want to know which is the "usual" setting they use when encoding the video?

BTW, thank you for your suggestion. So far I already tried HD-HQ (new profile) and also some other profile.

One more question, it is normal to take 4~5 hours to encode 2 hours dvd to h264?

I just finished experimenting the best bit rate for my DVD backup.

First I cut the video into 1 minute video and try encoding using several bit rate (1000 ~ 4000). Insane profile is really give insane encoding time but I don't like the result. So, I only tried with HD-HQ profile and play a bit.

IMHO, the best is 2000 kbps. The file size is half of the original but has equal quality with the original. Anything higher give smoother, nicer and better than original dvd video but also yield bigger file size. Anything lower give smaller file size but lower image quality.

But encoding time really trouble me.    For 1h45m video, it took almost 7 hours to encode. So, one night I can backup only 1 DVD.   

I cant find HD-HQ profile for x264 on megui >_>
btw, HQ-insane isnt the slowest, it just using 16 reference frame(slow as hell already but better compression).
the Motion estimation algorithm still using multihex,
there are 2 are the slowest, ESA and SATD ESA, which may give you <1fps encoding speed

anyone know how to convert mpeg4 to mp3?