1. I noticed that most of the MP3 bootlegs are encoded at 192 kbps constant bit rate.
    Would it be possible to use the LAME variable bit rate encoder (using the V2 quality profile) to do the encodes instead?

    It's much better quality at about the same file size
  2. I always use V1/V2.

    Problem is that the filesize may come above the 200MB, that is why 192kbps is an easy choice sometimes.