Hi, I have encoded an audio file with neroAacEnc as follows: +---- $ neroAacEnc -q 0.5 -if matrix.wav -of matrix.m4a +---- and ffmpeg correctly reports the bitrate of the file as 174 kb/s : +---- andrew at skamandros~/movies/matrix$ ffmpeg -i matrix.m4a FFmpeg version SVN-r15563, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al. configuration: --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/man --disable-debug --enable-shared --disable-static --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-pthreads --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libamr-nb --enable-nonfree --enable-gpl libavutil 49.11. 0 / 49.11. 0 libavcodec 52. 0. 0 / 52. 0. 0 libavformat 52.22. 1 / 52.22. 1 libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0 libavfilter 0. 1. 0 / 0. 1. 0 libswscale 0. 6. 1 / 0. 6. 1 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 built on Oct 5 2008 22:21:48, gcc: 4.2.3 Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'matrix.m4a': Duration: 02:11:20.43, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 174 kb/s Stream #0.0(und): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16 Must supply at least one output file +------ MPlayer however reports the bitrate as 'missing' and defaults to 128 kb/s: +------- andrew at skamandros~/movies/matrix$ mplayer matrix.m4a MPlayer dev-SVN-r27647 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 2) CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1 Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2 Playing matrix.m4a. libavformat file format detected. [lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 0 ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding) FAAD: compressed input bitrate missing, assuming 128kbit/s! AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000) Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio) decoder) ========================================================================== AO: [oss] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample) Video: no video Starting playback... A: 3.4 (03.3) of 7880.4 ( 2:11:20.4) 2.1% +------- I find this a little puzzling and I am curious to know if there is a way around this? Andrew -- Do you think that's air you're breathing?