This invention describes horizontal and vertical downscaling of the real-time video image using a camera sensor and a processing block (a base band engine in camera-phone mobile devices) for a real-time viewfinder display and/or video imaging. Horizontal downscaling is performed by the camera sensor and vertical downscaling is performed by the processing block. The invented image format enables the reduction of memory, processing power and bus capability, when the smaller resolution output image is needed to process from the higher resolution input image.