A method and apparatus for controlling the rate of compression in video/image compression environments is provided. The method includes determining a scaling factor that results in a compressed file size as close to a target file size as possible. In determining the scaling factor, tolerance limits of the current file size as compared with a predetermined tolerance is made, and when the tolerance is not met, the current scaling factor is interpolated to generate a new scaling factor, and consideration of a ratio of file sizes is made to determine if a new downsampling factor is needed for the interpolated scaling factor.