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Comment by e1ven | Hacker News Reader

I'm not trolling, I have a honest question- What do I get with Zencoder, versus the free Transcoding I get through Softlayer (http://bit.ly/hmDGtu)

Even if I didn't already have a Softlayer server, it seems like it'd be cheaper to get one of those then hire Zencoder for many cases.

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Fair question. What you get is scalability (Softlayer is explicitly for low-volume transcoding), an API (Softlayer might have one, though it's not documented at the above link), a lower error rate, higher visual quality, better compression, more options, and hands-on customer support. Not everyone needs these things, but many people do.

I would think along the same lines. Then recently I was doing contract work that included ability to upload and preview video files. My client had a very average vps and was not willing to spend much on having me install/test a bunch of packages to get video conversion going.

Bring in zencoder and I had video uploads working for him in a couple hours.

(Granted, I think someone who knows their stuff when it comes to ffmpeg etc. could very well do this in two hours without zencoder, I think. Nonetheless, this is one use case.)

I'm using Zencoder on a new project, and I've been deeply impressed at both the ease of getting started, and the quality of the tech support. Their API builder lets me fill out a form, and it automatically displays the HTTP headers and the necesary JSON.

There's a certain value to simplicity.

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