[FFmpeg-user] How can I reduce compression with libx265?

[Mark Filipak]

I transcoded from H.264 to x265 and the target is too compressed -- faces are waxy.

I tried the general directive '-compression_level 1'. I tried '-compression_level 6'. The results 
are identical (by 'identical', I mean the exact same file size and playback appearance). So the 
'-compression_level' directive doesn't do anything.

Source video is 11 GBytes.
Target video made is 300 MBytes -- way too small (too compressed).

The x265 coder is documented here:
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-codecs.html#libx265
There's no documentation in the documentation -- I would write "There's no 'there' there" but the 
younger audience wouldn't know to what I refer.

How can I reduce compression with libx265? Is 'preset' the way? Is 'tune' the way. There's not only 
no documentation for them, there's not even an indication of parameter type or range (or even if 
they take parameters -- the lack of documentation is shameful).