A video mosaic effect is created using a conventional digital video effects system by compressing the size of the image represented by an input video signal, thereby reducing its resolution, then progressively expanding the reduced-resolution image until a desired size is attained. At that point, the expanded, reduced-resolution image is replicated over the output scene, whereby the output scene is composed of multiple rectangular mosaic tiles. The nature of the mosaic effect is limited because the mosaic tiles are all identical.