Mr. Blah

  No, no, haha -- those are just joke/stress test menu items. The raw mode is under the Movie tab in the Magic Lantern menu. Andrew posted a picture of it a while back:   Remember: you need to have downloaded the experimental work-in-progress alpha build to use the raw functionality. If you just get the regular Magic Lantern stable release version, then the option to shoot raw won't be there.

  Just judging purely from the knowledge that the 5D Mk. III's raw files are on par with the GH2 in sharpness, I'd venture to guess that yes, you'd probably get an image about as good as the regular H.264 compressed one, and with all the other advantages of the raw. That's for 720p, of course. I wouldn't necessarily expect the same from 960x480, no matter how sharp it is.   To answer your question about the codec, I'd say "no". The raw footage recorded from these cameras right now is not in a codec of any kind; the video is in a completely uncompressed, unprocessed ".RAW" file format. You need to encode it to DNG manually before you can even use it in any sort of imaging program. Adding in a conventional video codec to the mix, like the ProRes or CineForm variants, would not only slow down the whole recording process due to the added processing requirements (as you'd effectively be forcing the camera to encode the footage in place of your computer), but it would also likely be neigh impossible given that one would need to install a custom-built encoding scheme onto the camera in the first place (with ProRes and CineForm both being non-open codecs protected by Apple and GoPro, to boot). I mean, after this raw hack, I wouldn't ever doubt the capabilities of the Magic Lantern team, but I'd say there's a slim chance of that happening. Even if they were able to work magic and get a ProRes encoder on to the camera, the extra overhead in processing work might cut the frame rates down substantially.

Luke Neumann commented on the Nofilmschool article that he thinks there's roughly two stops more exposure latitude possible with the DNG files. Crazy stuff.

I'd hesitate to jump to the conclusion that Canon intentionally cut this functionality out of the camera in order to protect their business. First, this functionality comes from grabbing frames from the Live View display buffer instead of the regular video mode, hence the odd 1.43:1 aspect ratio and resolution (side note: Andrew might like that for anamorphic work). Secondly, and perhaps most importantly to the matter of intent, this was found on the 5D Mk. II, Canon's first video-capable DSLR. Canon wasn't, at that time, expecting to completely flip the indie video market on its head -- they didn't even release the camera with 24p; I can't think that cutting 2040x1428 RAW capture via a display buffer was a matter of product tiering... not yet at least. My guess is this: just as in general software development, Canon probably had people writing code for the camera's Live View display functionality. Perhaps as part of diagnostic testing or just general exploration, this function was written into the camera's firmware/OS. However, most likely due to the odd nature of the function and it not being planned as a feature from the start, no further development was done. The code associated with this functionality was probably subsequently disabled. If anyone's familiar with modders and hackers finding new levels. models, and features hidden within the code video games, I'd parallel this discovery with that. Also, considering the potential reliability issues, the extra time, testing, QA, cost of development, and the data rate limitations on both the camera and CF cards, implementing a feature like this in a camera like the 5D Mk. II just wouldn't have made sense at the time.   Of course, my guess is as good as any at this point. I certainly think Canon's been taking the piss on the market with its lacking developments in affordable large sensor video solutions, but I'm not sure this is directly related to that.