# excamera/alfalfa

Purely functional video codec, used for ExCamera and Salsify

Repository: https://github.com/excamera/alfalfa
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/alfalfa
Language: C++
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: encoder, decoder, vp8, video
Last push: 2023-06-07T15:02:52+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4576, "days_push": 1183, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1203, forks 114 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:58.562620+00:00)

## What it is
Alfalfa is a purely functional VP8 video encoder and decoder written in C++ in explicit state-passing style, developed at Stanford. It underpins the ExCamera and Salsify systems and includes Salsify sender/receiver programs for low-latency video transmission.

## Use cases
- encode video to VP8 in a purely functional state-passing style
- decode VP8 video frames
- run low-latency interactive video streaming with Salsify
- build serverless video processing pipelines like ExCamera
- research on functional video codecs and stateless computation

## When to choose
- you need a stateless or functional-style VP8 codec for distributed or serverless video processing
- you are reproducing or extending ExCamera or Salsify research
- you want fine-grained control over per-frame encoding state

## When to avoid
- you need a production-grade, feature-complete VP8 codec (use libvpx instead)
- you need hardware-accelerated encoding
- you need a permissively licensed project without GPL components

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: video-processing, image-processing
- domain: media
- platform: cpp
- tags: vp8, video-codec, encoder, decoder, purely-functional, excamera, salsify, research, video, linux

## Member repositories
- excamera/alfalfa (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:58.562620+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:20:30.254978+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/excamera/alfalfa (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:58.562620+00:00, sha 989d40304b24)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.