H.264 slow scrubbing and playback performance I have two videos, both roughly the same spec:

A: H.264/AAC 1920x808 24FPS ~3015kb/s
Using Quicktime player I can scrub through this movie smoothly and with fine detail. Jumping from one position to another, playback will happen immediately.

B: H.264/AAC 1920x1080 25FPS ~3662kb/s
This video can’t seem to handle the scrubbing as well. Dragging the playback head hangs constantly, I keep getting a beach-ball when jumping from one position to another.

I realise that the data rate on B: is higher, but is there anything I can do to improve it’s performance other than re-encoding at a reduced data rate?

Are there any tools available other than VLC/Quicktime media info, that will show me more detailed encoding options so I can further optimise B: based on A: if I have to re-encode?
Usually in these situations I'd say maybe you have a bottleneck from your storage media. But with those bit rates any Ssd or hdd should be fine unless the files are really large. Thus it sounds to me that you have either a bottleneck with your GPU, Cpu, or Ram. All are equally important for smooth playback. I'm guessing the issue is the increased resolution of the second clip.

Without knowing more about your specs I would say your best options are to create low res Proxies. In premiere it's pretty easy, you just have to modify your project ingest settings. You might as well create Proxies for all the files, it won't matter anyways as it will relink on export.