Resolution of video determines how much spatial information is in a video file. Ultimotion compression algorithms organize this data so that it can be easily scaled up or down by factors of two as it is decompressed. Furthermore, as the data is decompressed, a sufficiently powered playback system can duplicate the data during output and display the video at four times its original size. This results in an effective output size larger than the input size. In this way, Ultimotion can be scaled down on systems incapable of processing the authored video resolution and scaled up on systems with more processing capability than the authored video requires.