Here is a function for doing this on Linux (and maybe Mac). I've looked around and I haven't seen any previous example of how to do this in MMA. Perhaps the comments will enlighten me as to prior work. **for my case this not only uses far less memory, it's also about 6x faster** than `Export["foo.mp4",frames,VideoEncoding -> "LIBX264",]`. YMMV. The function below accepts a (pure/stateless) function `f: Any -> Graphics` together with a list of values `times`. It spawns an `ffmpeg` subprocess (`ffmpeg` should be on the path), and then proceeds to loop over the values in `times`. For each value, it calls `f` to generate a frame, which it then rasterizes and feeds to the `ffmpeg` process via a fifo/named pipe. This way, there's at most one frame in memory at a time. When all frames have been fed to `ffmpeg`, the fifo is closed, which signals ffmpeg to conclude its business. The code currently suffers from some caveats: 1. It's been tested on linux only. It may work as-is on Mac. It does not work as-is on windows. 2. The encoding parameters are of course debatable. I prefer to force periodic keyframes because, though it makes the file substantially larger, it makes "scrubbing" smoother when using my media player. I tend to do that a lot with technical animations. 3. The code isn't particularly elegant. My thanks to [1] for guidance. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51903888/is-it-possible-to-send-ffmpeg-images-by-using-pipe ### Implementation ```mathematica EncodeMyVideo[frameGraphicFun_, times_, outputFile_, rasterWidth_, fps_ : 24, keyframeInterval_ : 24, videoBitrate_ : "2500k", batchSize_ : Max[$ProcessorCount, Min[16, $ProcessorCount*4]]] := Block[{ fifoName = FileNameJoin[{$TemporaryDirectory, "fifo." <> CreateUUID[]}], rasterHeight = ImageAspectRatio[frameGraphicFun[times[[1]]]]*rasterWidth // N // Ceiling, templateCtx, templateBody, stdout, cmd, process, bst, i = 1, progressMessage, messageCell, result }, templateCtx = <| "width" -> ToString[rasterWidth], "height" -> ToString[rasterHeight], "fps" -> ToString[fps], "fifoName" -> fifoName, "keyframeInterval" -> keyframeInterval, "videoBitrate" -> videoBitrate |>; templateBody = "ffmpeg -hide_banner -nostats -loglevel 24 -y -f rawvideo -pix_fmt \ rgb24 -s `width`x`height` -r `fps` -i `fifoName` -c:v libx264 -b:v \ `videoBitrate` -x264-params keyint=`keyframeInterval` -an"; RunProcess[{"mkfifo", fifoName}]; WithCleanup[ cmd = (TemplateApply[templateBody, templateCtx] // StringSplit)~ Join~{outputFile}; process = StartProcess[cmd]; bst = OpenWrite[fifoName, BinaryFormat -> True]; progressMessage = "Encoding Frame " <> ToString[i] <> "/" <> ToString[Length[times]]; messageCell = PrintTemporary[Dynamic[progressMessage]]; Scan[( frames = ParallelMap[ Rasterize[frameGraphicFun[#], RasterSize -> {rasterWidth, rasterHeight}] &, #]; (*frames =Rasterize[frameGraphicFun[#], RasterSize\[Rule]{rasterWidth,rasterHeight}]&/@#;*) Scan[( progressMessage = "Encoding Frame " <> ToString[i++] <> "/" <> ToString[Length[times]]; BinaryWrite[bst, ImageData[#, "Byte"]]; ) &, frames]; ) &, Partition[times, UpTo[batchSize]]]; NotebookDelete[messageCell]; ProcessStatus[process]; , Close[bst], RunProcess[{"rm", fifoName}]]; progressMessage = "Waiting for ffmpeg to return... " <> ProcessStatus[process]; messageCell = PrintTemporary[Dynamic[progressMessage]]; While[ProcessStatus[process] == "Running", progressMessage = "Waiting for ffmpeg to return... " <> ProcessStatus[process]; Pause[0.25]]; NotebookDelete[messageCell]; result = ReadString[ProcessConnection[process, "StandardError"]]; If [result == EndOfFile, "Encoding Completed Successfully!", "Error:\n" <> result] ] ``` ### Usage ```mathematica generateFrameGraphic[t_] := Plot[Sin[x t], {x, 0, 2 \[Pi]}, PlotRange -> {-2, 2}]; Block[{fps = 24, duration = 5, tStart = 0, tEnd = 1, videoWidth = 640, times}, times = Range[tStart, tEnd, (tEnd - tStart)/(duration*fps)]; EncodeMyVideo[generateFrameGraphic, times, "sinAnimation.mp4", videoWidth, fps] ] ```