The complexity of the plot does not affect the length of the column vector required, but the size of the current window does. Larger windows require more storage. This step is not required, but if you do not initialize M , the code runs more slowly because the storage for M is reallocated each time a new column is appended. Once the movie has been generated you can play it back. You can readily generate and smoothly play back movies with a few dozen frames on most computers.
Longer movies require large amounts of primary memory or a very effective virtual memory system.
To include the rest of the figure you have to specify the rectangle you want to include as the whole figure rectangle. The mpeg format is an industry standard for video coding and compression. If you want to know all the details about mpgwrite check out the documentation . I currently have it installed on the HP's. Here is an mpeg movie of my SOS-phase animation.