Systems and methods for the selection of resolutions for seamless resolution switching of multimedia content in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. In one embodiment of the invention, a source encoder includes a processor configured by a source encoder application to receive multimedia content, where the multimedia content comprises video data having a primary resolution and a primary sample aspect ratio and encode the video data as a set of alternative streams, where a plurality of the streams in the set of alternative streams have different maximum bitrates and resolutions, the resolution of each of the plurality of streams comprises a width and height that are both an integer number of pixels, and both the width and height of each of the plurality of streams is a common fraction of the width and height of the corresponding primary resolution.