Unable to capture from camcorder with WinTV-PVR 250 card and and WinTV2000

[forestial]

I have the following:

Canon PAL Camcorder
WinTV-PVR 250 card
WinTV2000 software and all drivers: using the latest available from Hauppauge's website.

My objective is to capture the video and audio from a number of PAL Hi8 tapes, edit them and eventually burn to DVD for viewing.

I connected the camcorder to the PVR 250 card using an s-video cable. I also connected a cable from the A/V out port on the camcorder to the audio input on the PVR 250.

In Preferences, under the Movies tab I specified valid directories for both 'Capture' and 'Pause'. I chose "MPEG2 12 Mbit/sec (CBR)" for the format (I was guessing here: is this correct?). Under the Advanced options, video tab I see that Output Stream is Program, Rate Details is 'Constant', 12000, GOPs is 15 and video resolution is 720x576 (sounds right for PAL).

In WinTV2000's 'Channel Configuration' I added a channel (210) for the svideo input. Doing 'Edit' on this channel shows that it has a '
video format' of 'PAL BGHIDK' (which I think is correct, though I don't recall entering that).

When I select that channel in WinTV2000 and press Play on the camcorder, the video is displayed and audio is audible.

So far so good, but now I cannot get it to capture any video.

With the camcorder running, video appearing good in the WinTV2000 application and audio being heard, I press the OTR Record button in WinTV2000. A little control panel drops down (nothing appears in it, though, apart from a row of buttons). No files appear in the specified Captures directory.

If I press the Record button in the little control panel, the application crashes and gives the usual 'Please tell Microsoft about this problem' dialog. I have seen several other similar crashes, while trying to work with that little control panel.

In event viewer I find an Application Error with the message:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 12/28/2007
Time: 3:52:33 PM
User: N/A
Computer: CASTLE
Description:
Faulting application wintv2k.exe, version 4.13.24088.0, faulting module hcwtvwnd.dll, version 3.1.24111.0, fault address 0x0003f096.

I am using Windows XP Home, SP2 with all the security patches and updates known to Microsoft.

I have seen enough successes mentioned in this forum that I have to believe it is possible to get all of this to work, but it's not working for me.

Am I doing some obvious thing wrong?

[SmokieStover]

I can't help with your crashing problem. Suggest you call Hauppauge during regular business hours or contact them by e-mail. You can also try here: http://www.shspvr.com/

You should capture at the quality level you will actually use on DVD. IMHO, for NTSC, the "DVD Standard Play" profile is as good as Hi-8 gets and equals 90 minutes recording time. If you use a custom profile, do NOT exceed the maximum bitrate allowed by the DVD Standard.