I can't give any recommondations, as I'm searching for a service to implement for many clients myself. However, perhaps I can help anyone else who is also looking.
It seems there are a couple type of services:
- Encoding
- Zencoder
- Encoding.com
- PandaStream
- Ankoder
- HeyWatch
- Encoding, hosting and video players
- Ooyala
- Brightcove
- 23 Video
In looking at these services, a few things to consider:
- API supported features
- Progress calls, encoding complete pings, job tracking, output formats
- XML or JSON or both
- Authentication techniques (oauth etc)
- Direct client uploads (no proxy to your server)
- Storage of complete video
- Temp storage, FTP to your server, Amazon S3
- Availability of direct (if hosted) url for each format
- Encoding formats
- All HTML 5 formats (mp4 h264, ogg etc)
- Mobile encoding support (special settings for android)
- Support
- SLAs?
- Phone/email/turn over time?
- Cost (many different payment types)
- Time of video
- Number & Time of outputs
- Filesize (input/output)
- Large volume discounts
