Before we start making animations, we need to install either FFmpeg, avconv, MEncoder, or ImageMagick on our system. These additional dependencies are not bundled with Matplotlib, and so we need to install them separately. We are going to walk you through the steps of installing FFmpeg.

For Debian-based Linux users, FFmpeg can be installed by issuing the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

For Mac users, Homebrew (https://brew.sh/) is the simplest way to search and install the FFmpeg package. For those who don't have Homebrew, you can paste the following code in your terminal to install it:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

After that, we can install FFmpeg by issuing the following command in the terminal app:

brew install ffmpeg

The installation steps for Windows users are quite a bit more involved, as we need to download the executable ourselves, followed by adding the executable to the system path. Therefore, we have prepared a series of screen captures to guide you through the process. 

First, we need to obtain a prebuilt binary from http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/. Choose the CPU architecture that matches with your system, and select the latest release and static linked libraries.

Next, we need to extract the downloaded ZIP file to the C drive as c:ffmpeg, and add the folder c:ffmpegin to the Path variable. To do this, go to Control Panel and click on the System and Security link, followed by clicking on System. In the System window, click on the Advanced system settings link to the left:

In the pop-up System Properties window, click on the Environmental Variables… button:

Select the Path entry, and click on the Edit… button:

In the Edit environmental variable window, create a new entry that shows c:ffmpegin. Click on OK in all pop-up windows to save your changes. Restart Command Prompt and Jupyter Notebook and you are good to go.