diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index e2059b87a8cb..07f7c686877c 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ matrix:
 
 install:
   - pip install -q --use-mirrors nose python-dateutil $NUMPY pep8 pyparsing pillow sphinx
-  - sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -qq install inkscape libav-tools gdb
+  - sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -qq install inkscape libav-tools gdb mencoder
   # We use --no-install-recommends to avoid pulling in additional large latex docs that we don't need
 
   # We manually install humor sans using the package from Ubuntu 14.10. Unfortunatly humor sans is not
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/tests/test_animation.py b/lib/matplotlib/tests/test_animation.py
index 97ffe5327c60..786edeed3337 100644
--- a/lib/matplotlib/tests/test_animation.py
+++ b/lib/matplotlib/tests/test_animation.py
@@ -33,9 +33,6 @@ def check_save_animation(writer, extension='mp4'):
     if not animation.writers.is_available(writer):
         raise KnownFailureTest("writer '%s' not available on this system"
                                % writer)
-    if 'mencoder' in writer:
-        raise KnownFailureTest("mencoder is broken")
-
     fig, ax = plt.subplots()
     line, = ax.plot([], [])
 
@@ -57,7 +54,7 @@ def animate(i):
     F.close()
     anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, init_func=init, frames=5)
     try:
-        anim.save(F.name, fps=30, writer=writer)
+        anim.save(F.name, fps=30, writer=writer, bitrate=500)
     except UnicodeDecodeError:
         raise KnownFailureTest("There can be errors in the numpy " +
                                "import stack, " +