MovieWriter

Use a MovieWriter directly to grab individual frames and write them to a file. This avoids any event loop integration, but has the advantage of working with even the Agg backend. This is not recommended for use in an interactive setting.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as manimation

# Fixing random state for reproducibility
np.random.seed(19680801)


FFMpegWriter = manimation.writers['ffmpeg']
metadata = dict(title='Movie Test', artist='Matplotlib',
                comment='Movie support!')
writer = FFMpegWriter(fps=15, metadata=metadata)

fig = plt.figure()
l, = plt.plot([], [], 'k-o')

plt.xlim(-5, 5)
plt.ylim(-5, 5)

x0, y0 = 0, 0

with writer.saving(fig, "writer_test.mp4", 100):
    for i in range(100):
        x0 += 0.1 * np.random.randn()
        y0 += 0.1 * np.random.randn()
        l.set_data(x0, y0)
        writer.grab_frame()

Total running time of the script: ( 0 minutes 0.000 seconds)