Surface acoustic waves (SAW) are adequate regarding material characterization because they have low geometric attenuation compared to bulk waves. SAW can be generated easily by normal excitation using contact transducers or power lasers and have also a unique elliptic polarization, characterized by two parameters: the ellipticity (H/V) ratio between the horizontal and the vertical components of the elliptic motions and the orientation angle (θ) between the horizontal axis of the ellipse and the surface. In the case of a viscoelastic isotropic material, a complete characterization is achieved by the association of the quantitative measurement of the polarization and the propagative characteristics, the complex wavenumber, of the SAW. In practice, this operation is performed using 3D lased vibrometry for propagation monitoring in space and time. The post-processing is carried out by Quaternion Fourier Transform, the Prony algorithm and the complex Lamé coefficients identification for the theoretical model of propagation on the material. Good agreement is observed between the obtained results and the ones of the pulse-echo method.