In this paper, a weighted adaptive scalable hierarchical (WASH) tree based video coding algorithm is proposed with low-memory usage. The standard coding uses three separate lists to store and organize tree data structures and their significance, which can grow large at high rate and consume large amounts of memory. In the proposed algorithm, value added adaptive scale down operator discards unnecessary lists and the process length of the sorting phase is shortened to reduce coding time and memory usage. Spatial and temporal scalability can be easily incorporated into the system to meet various types of display parameter requirements and self-adapting rate allocations are automatically achieved. Results show that the proposed method reduces memory usage, run time and improves PSNR.