[Hampshire] re-encoding video on linux

All,

My digital camera records video in the form of avi files, which appear to
contain mjpg video (640x480 @ 30fps 24bpp) and aLaw audio. Which of course
isn't any use for sites such as Facebook.

so to re-encode my video I am using the following command:

ffmpeg -i rmov0377.avi -sameq -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec libmp3lame
output.mpg

This produces a video file, however it doesn't appear to be the same video
quality as the source (as -sameq would suggest). This process also
massively reduces the file size from 44meg to 2.4meg!

I realise that I will lose some quality when changing video format, but I
wondered if there are any ffmpeg experts out there that could suggest a
better command, or something I'm missing?

Cheers,

Steve.