Magic Lantern RAW and the Canon 6D

The Canon 6D has a sensor resolution of 5472x3648, covering a standard Full Frame area of 36x24mm. Such high resolution is too intensive to be recorded as video by the built in Digic 5+ processor. Compromises therefor must be put forth from the factory. Built in H.264 1080p24,30 is achieved by skipping lines of pixels and then stitching them together to make an approximate representation of what the frame would have looked like if all pixels had been read out. The benefit of this approach is that the entire sensor is scanned, giving the same perspective as a full frame still photo. The down side is each adjacent pixel has a large gap, creating an unflattering 'stepped' look.

The other way of capturing video is by only reading a small portion of the sensor at a time. This method resolves stepping since the gap between each pixel is eliminated. The result of only taking a small area 'windowing' in the middle of the sensor is a very large crop factor, 4.28X in the case of the 6D as seen below.

Though the stepping effect is not terribly apparent when viewed still (lower left), moving objects bring out the problem stronger as well as the dreaded Moire other 6D users have commented on. The upper left image is the 1:1 RAW pixel readout, notice the sharpness (and 4.28x crop) compared to the built in Canon H.264 720p60 on the top right and 1080p30 at right bottom.