Extract final frame from a video using ffmpeg

Question

I know how to extract the first frame by using

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00 -i input.mp4 -vframes 1 -q:v 31 output.png

Here, the option -ss requires to know the exact time of the frame to extract.

I would like to have the final frame of any.mp4 without knowing the exact final time of the video.

Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

Use

ffmpeg -sseof -3 -i file -vsync 0 -q:v 31 -update true out.jpg

-sseof seeks from the end - I've used a value of 3, to account for files with longer audio streams. -update is an image2 muxer option which tells ffmpeg to overwrite the output file. So the last time the output will be overwritten is when the last frame is processed.