Abstract: A video display system has a color display driven by a color generator for generating multicolor segments on a multiline television raster of the display. In this system, a method controls the color and the length of the lines by serially generating an array of color bytes, each being of a first class or a second class, the period being indicated by the value of a particular bit position in the line. Each of the bytes of the first class is divided into a first field and a second field, the first field being a coded-combination of bits representing a color, the second field being a coded-combination of bits representing a length, while the second class has only one field, that representing a length. By examining the particular bit it is determined whether to change the color or extend the color for the distance indicated by the length value which for the second class can now be much greater than for bytes of the first class.