# Playing videos in pure console via framebuffer (no X!)



## Damiano (Oct 16, 2022)

Using `mpv` trying to stream youtube and m3u8 playlists. I'm not sure how it's supposed to work exactly, but last time I tried it in opensuse it worked nicely right out of the box (sorry for the Linux reference). No X installed, just ran it with `--vo=drm`. That won't cut it in freebsd, though, and I don't know why. Here's the output:


```
[vo/drm] VT_GETMODE failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
[vo/drm] Failed to set up VT switcher. Terminal switching will be unavailable.
[vo/drm] Listing DRM devices with drmGetDevices failed! (No such file or directory)
[vo/drm] Failed to find a usable DRM primary node!
[vo/drm] Failed to create KMS.
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (--vo) device.
```

Installing X and going `startx` works but I really wish it was feasible outside X as I'm a little short on ram and I really like the idea of playing stuff directly from the console. I know it should be possible to pull it off but I don't know where and what to look for. I'm also ignorant as to whether it's GPU/driver related. If there are better ways of achieving the same thing, let me know, please.


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## ayleid96 (Oct 16, 2022)

Everything i know that is able to play videos directly on tty is linux related. It mostly works through fbdev which is linux kernel thing. You can get ascii output only as far as i know here on FreeBSD.

Anyway, running minimal x installation with lets say x11-wm/dwm is not RAM intensive at all. It will be about 50-60 megs of RAM max. And you need more ram to play video with X or without anyway.

More info here.


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## Damiano (Oct 16, 2022)

> Anyway, running minimal x installation with lets say x11-wm/dwm is not RAM intensive at all. It will be about 50-60 megs of RAM max.


I wanted to do that but wasn't sure tiling WMs are my cup of tea. But now that I think of it it's probably the best of ideas. After all, besides playing videos I still need a screensaver, current date/time, etc, etc. Thank you.


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