A test and measurement instrument has a user interface configured to allow a user to provide one or more user inputs, a display to display results to the user, a memory, one or more processors configured to execute code to cause the one or more processors to receive a waveform array containing waveforms resulting from sweeping one or more parameters from a set of parameters, recover a clock signal from the waveform array, generate a waveform image for each waveform, render the waveform images into video frames to produce an image array of the video frames, select at least some of the video frames to form a video sequence, and play the video sequence on a display. A method of animating waveform data includes receiving a waveform array containing waveforms resulting from sweeping one or more parameters from a set of parameters, recovering a clock signal from the waveforms, generating a waveform image from each of the waveforms, rendering the waveform images into video frames to produce an image array of the video frames, selecting at least some of the video frames to play as a video sequence, and playing the video sequence on a display.