600D crop mode, correct usage?

[emphram]

So I'm working with the 600D, and I found out recently that the 3x zoom reduces moire and aliasing (quite a bunch according to my tests), and it improves the overall picture quality by using a 1:1 ratio from the sensor. My questions are, is this the correct way of using the crop mode for h.264 and raw recording, from the canon menu? Or is it supposed to be used from some ML menu or module that I might not have seen? How to shoot in 3x crop mode with 720p a 30 or 24fps?

Thanks in advance.

[N/A]

Yup, just zoom in like normal up to 3x for h264, anything over 3x zoom in h264 is digital and reduces quality; therefore ML blocks it by default. And I don't have my 600D now but I believe for raw and mlv crop mode you would just record the same way, but in 5x zoom, since mlv resolutions are configureable and working from a sensor crop as opposed to a digital zoom, this does not hurt image quality.

[emphram]

Thanks for the reply, that makes everything clearer. I'm stunned at how much improvment the 3x crop gives me even in h.264 (halos around fine edges seemde to have disappeared completely in the quick test shots I did on leaves in my backyard), to the point that I feel like a fool for not experimenting with it earlier. I shoot in a lot of cramped spaces, so I think I'll buy a quality wide angle lens adapter, 0.45x that will allow me to use the 3x crop in these spaces, without needed to use a 8-11 lens (which I don't own  ), maybe some distortion, but nothing that can't be fixed in post I believe.

Cheers!