Matplotlib Animation Moviewriters Fails On Ubuntu 12.04

I am attempting to save matplotlib animations to a movie via ffmpeg on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (32-bit Desktop). Following the matplotlib example, it fails to load the animation writer:

Solution 1:

If you are using the unbuntu packaged version of matplotlib it is 1.1.1rc1. The attribute writers was added about 3 months after that tag, and is in versions 1.2 and later.

You can either install matplotlib from source (this is what I do, it's not too bad) or use the daily ppa.

My advice for compiling from source is to use the packaging system for as many of the dependencies as possible and install matplotlib by hand (if you do want to use pip see this answer) as such

git clone git://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git
cd matplotlib
git checkout -b v1.2.0
python setup.py install --prefix=/home/username/local_installs/

(which will get you the latest stable version) then make sure the path where it got installed is in your $PYTHONPATH which can be done by including the line

export PYTHONPATH=/home/username/local_installs/lib/python2.7/site-packages/:$PYTHONPATH

in your ~/.bashrc file. You might have to vary that line a bit depending on which version of python you use. You might need to do this (and make sure folders exist) before setup.py will be happy.