Author Topic: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities  (Read 7776 times)

Martin

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Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« on: September 27, 2020, 10:20:51 AM »
Hi,

quick question:

I just received an invoice by our beloved customs agency informing me of a misdeclaration of taxable item (I declared the Chronos 1.4 as a "digital camera") and a new re-classification as video camera, which would result in an extra sum of 125 Euros.

Besides the fact my purchase and customs declaration happened over 3 years ago and a general tax free processing of video cameras which aren't able to record more than 30 minutes (of "real time". I bought the 16Gbyte version, so, I'm at 8 seconds "real time" recording):

The Chronos, by itself, can't record audio, I think? The inbuild microphone is just for acoustic trigger purposes? Can someone official please confirm this?
What are the plans for the line-in? Does it allow real audio/video recording, sometime in the future? Even at higher framerates or just at, say, 30fps?

Because: If the Chronos wouldn't be able to record audio by itself, it shouldn't be necessarily declared as a video camera. Instead, it'd be more like a digital (photo) camera (without sound recording capability) taking fullframe photos in high succession, much like "continuous drive" on photo cameras  ;D.
I know, this is weird argumentation, but I think our customs made a mistake there, with the classification.

If I can prove, the Chronos can't "record reality continuously", for longer than 30 minutes (e.g. in HD) and isn't capable of audio recording by itself, it should be clear it's not your standard video camera.

I'm understandably slightly upset about this, I think other german Chronos buyers might get an invoice like that as well, so, it'd be nice to have certainty about this  :)

Thanks!
All the best
Martin

Nikon1

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2020, 10:31:32 AM »
Well, at least the 2.1 is able to continously record at 60fps/ FullHD, and given that you are able to plug in an Huge SSD, i would expect it to record far over 30 Min in one Go, Real Time. Should just record untill memory is full, and at a rather Low Bitrate, you could go for quite a while untill its full....
 I dont know about the 1.4 tho.
Also, i dont really know those laws too well, but i am really not sure about if you would be able to get out of something like this by just saying that it cant record propper Audio. I think what matters here is the Video itself.

Martin

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2020, 10:45:45 AM »
Hi Nikon,

yea, just ran a test, at HD and 30fps, I think it would go beyond 30 minutes..

Hm, ok, audio recording capability is still an issue though..

Also, custom tax invoices like this are void after 3 years.. not sure they see it that way as well..  :(

The new classification lists this TARIC nr.: 85258091900. Searching the latest rulings, I can't find that nr., only one with a "0" less at the end, which is already the classification "other":

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/measures.jsp?Lang=de&Taric=85258091&SimDate=20200927

And if you click on that nr., the custom tax amounts pop open, listing Canada with 0% customs tax..
I need to clear this with customs...
There went my sunday evening..
« Last Edit: September 27, 2020, 10:53:50 AM by Martin »

Nikon1

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2020, 10:58:29 AM »
well, if they put up much of a fight, it might be better to just pay the 125, still seems kind of reasonable amount of money.
 However, if you can proove them Wrong easily, might be worth a try.
 Seen whole Companies go down because some official financial instance pressed some questionable tax Claims, so watch out, they usualy have the Last word there at the end, unless you know some good lawyers and want to put in the Time and money...
 About the Audio thing, just think about Cameras Like RED, they wont record Audio at all, unless you buy some Specific Add-On-Interface Unit, to even be able to record audio at all. I dont know if those would also fall into said category, but just to Remind, that not all Professional Cameras need to be able to record audio, and still can record way beyond 30min.
 Again, i heard of this, but never looked it up actually, so maybe just look into the Actual Law Texts themself, then you would know for sure.
 #EDIT#: Seen, that you put the Link to the regulation itself

Nikon1

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2020, 11:07:05 AM »
Mal kurz Quergelesen das Teil, und da steht nicht "Einfuhrzoll:0%" sondern "Zollpräferenz"! Achtung, Unterschied!
 Gern mal die Fußnote Studieren, wo gefühlt hundert Vermerke sind, wann der "Anspruch auf Anwendung dieser Präferenz" nicht gegeben ist.
 Z.b. (sofern ich das Richtig gelesen hab) wenns nen Gewissen wert übersteigt und solche sachen.
 D.h. die Werden das vermutlich nochmal geprüft haben, und festgestellt haben, dass da vlt. noch geld zu holen ist....

Martin

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2020, 11:24:52 AM »
This is nuts  ::)

I'll try to clear this with them.

Atm I see a clear breach of the 3 year limited timeframe, DHL is just relaying the invoice, I'm the official debtor and was informed two weeks past the allowed timeframe:
https://www.zoll.de/DE/Fachthemen/Zoelle/Abgabenerhebung/Erlass-Erstattung/Einzelne-Erstattungsfaelle/Art-116-119-UZK/Unzulaessige-Nacherhebung/unzulaessige-nacherhebung_node.html#doc298852bodyText2

Anyway, might be my only chance since they might not let themselves be fooled by my technical detailery  :D
I'll post the results later..

Nikon1

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #6 on: September 27, 2020, 11:26:25 AM »
Yeah, would be nice to know, for all the other German Buyers, if this comes up at some point.

Martin

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2020, 10:39:40 AM »
So, today I finally got confirmation by german customs, that the Chronos won't be classified as a "video camera", at least in my case, at least for the foreseeable future (maybe, no guarantees. But german customs declarations older than 3 years aren't re-opened/re-classified, due to a statute of limitation at that time).

When I recieved the Chronos 1.4 back in early September 2017, I had to fill out a customs form at the door with DHL and paid the german import tax right there. This made DHL my "legal agent" for german customs and they relayed my item declaration along with those taxes.

Right then and there, I classified the Chronos as "Digitalkamera", a term mostly understood as a digital photo camera, taking pictures, maybe capable of taking short videos, etc. (There is a reason, why most/all photo cameras aren't capable of continuous recording times of more than 30 minutes! This is one of the characteristics of a true video camera, to record audio and video beyond that mark).

For me, it was (and actually still is) not a true video camera because:

- no sound recording capability (yet). Honestly, at 10k+ fps, sound is irrelevant anyway.. all you'd get would be a very low hum, even on breaking glass
- no possibility to record more than 30 minutes of realtime footage (not sure if the first firmwares allowed less fps per resolution, then. I didn't know that this was even possible for a while), at least when used according to its proper purpose (say HD res at 1500 fps, or even 500 - 1000 fps)
- no actual video is stored internally, it's plain images, shot very rapidly, much like continuous drive mode on a good photo camera. You need to, in a second, manual step, either export those images or let the camera compress the image sequence into a video (accepting some quality loss), at that time.
After starting a new recording, or on power-off, the image sequence is permanently erased, a true video recorder works differently as well, here (you aren't forced to erase each recording before recording a new scene)

Long story short: The Chronos (1.4 at least) was successfully re-classified as "Digitalkamera", "Warentarifnummer/Taric-nr.": 8525 8030 000

All the best  :)
Martin

Nikon1

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Re: Clear statement concerning audio recording capabilities
« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2020, 11:05:04 AM »
Yes, thats the exact reason, why most DSLRs/ DSLMs today can only record for 29Min and 59sec internally, as weird as that is, but if they made it just one second longer, it would cost more to import.
 I actually classified mine as "eine Digitale Highspeedkamera incl. im Lieferumfang enthaltenes Zuhbehör wie z.B. Ladegerät, Akku, Speichermedium. Und ein Infrarot schutzfilter-Glas für den Sensor", so an Digital Highspeedcamera, which i think is kind of different than just calling it a digital Camera in general.
 And you are right about that, while you propably could use the Chronos to record real time video longer than 30Min in one go (i dont know if an SSD would still be considered recording internally, since if you hook up an Atomos Recorder to a Sony A7 it counts as recording externally, so it also cant record 30+ Min INTERNALLY...), and in future maybe also with Audio, or just use some kind of standalone Audio Recorder like an H1 or H4 with an External mic, i wouldnt really use it for that, since there are just better ways to do that. Would be kind of surprised if someone actually used the 2.1 for something like this unless they had good reasons for doing so...? About as "easily" you could use it for Timelapse (sarcasm btw.), but thats not what it is meant for. While you can also go and take Single Images with the Chronos and basically use it as a Photography tool (i actually did that for testing, it works), it also isnt really good at doing it, for different reasons, one of them beeing the rather obsolete resolution for digital Still images, the other one beeing a lot of work to finally get that single image saved. It is and propably allways will be a speciality camera for Highspeed Video, its the only thing it does good, but it does that REALLY GOOD. Most common digital Cameras of today are more and more becoming some kind of universal tool, for images, video, and more and more even do Highspeed Video. But they also usually either focus on beeing an good Video Camera (A7s Series, GH5 and alike), or beeing a good Picture camera, they usually cut corners on the other features to do one thing really good, others might try to balance it out a bit more and make an Camera that isnt the best at doing anything in particular, but can do a lot of things good enough. And both the Chronos Cameras are not really video cameras. About everyone i can think of would propably use some different Camera to shoot anything else than effects shots on the Chronos, unless you want to 100% Color match the Footage or film from Same perspective or stuff like that.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 11:11:27 AM by Nikon1 »