[Eug]

OS X's Finder and Quicktime just provide average bit rates, but I want to check the peak bit rates of some of my video files.

My dSLR records H.264 Quicktime compatible video at around 47ish Mbps average, but they're variable bit rate files.

[mduell]

If you have a Windows instance, DGAVCIndex will do it.

[Eug]

Thanks. I may have to resort to Windows, although it might be problematic since all of my Windows machines are too slow to do 1080p H.264, especially at those bitrates. Heh. My SLR can encode H.264 faster than some of my desktops can decode it. Mind you, I don't really need to be able to play it real time. As long as the software can show the peak bitrates that's fine I suppose.

Anyone know of freeware/cheap Mac software that will show peak bitrates?

[mduell]

DGAVCIndex should be faster than realtime since it doesn't have to actually decode each frame, just check the number of bits in it.

I bet you could tease it out of ffmpeg, the problem is all the google searches polluted with setting peak when encoding.