Quick and easy x264 example ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset slow -c:a copy output.mp4 Quick and easy x265 example ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx265 -crf 18 -preset medium -c:a copy output.mp4 Change the resolution Add the argument -vf scale=1280:-1 to scale the width to 1280 and keep the height in proportion Whats the difference in presets ? x264 presets are more for adjusting the time taken to encode the video.