I dont think an arduino has the internal buffer to handle that much data. A teensy could but I think sticking with the raspberry pi is probably still a better plan. Theres a lot more that can go wrong trying to communicate between the computer and teensy (is it the teensy buffer thats messing up or the program you uploaded) as opposed to a single board solution. Corrupted SD cards aren't that problematic for permanent installations (coming from the museum field) since you can clone a dozen of them and swap them out if need be with very little effort unless you make it hard to access the pi (which you shouldn't)
If you're still curious heres PJRC's great octoWS2812 library for handling a bunch of leds
https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_OctoWS2811.html
Those are programmable leds but the concept is still the same in terms of handling data buffers, you would just need to adapt it to fit whatever hardware you are using